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Kcb. MasMtiffton (55latrtien. 


THE LORD’S PRAYER. New Edition. i6mo, gilt 
top, $1.00. 

APPLIED CHRISTIANITY. Moral Aspects of Social 
Questions. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? i6mo, $1.25. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 

Boston and New York. 




TOOLS AND THE MAN 


PROPERTY AND INDUSTRY UNDER 
THE CHRISTIAN LA W 


BY 

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 

\ * 


May it please your Serene Highnesses, your Majesties, Lordships , 
and Law-wardships, the proper Epic of this world is not now “Arms 
and the Ma?i; ” how much less “ Shirt-frills and the Man ; no, it is 
now “ Tools and the Man ; ” that, henceforth to all time, is now our 
Epic ; — and you, first of all others, I think , were wise to take note 
of that. — Carlyle, Past and Present. 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
tfttoersi&e Cambrib0e 









B.T)?oi a 

,G5 


Copyright, 1893, 

By WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 

All rights reserved. 


The Riverside Press , Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 


PREFACE. 


The chapters which follow contain the sub¬ 
stance of a course of lectures spoken to the stu¬ 
dents of the New Haven Theological Seminary, 
on the Lyman Beecher foundation, in January, 
1887. Portions of the same course have been 
given in Cornell University, in Mansfield Col¬ 
lege, Oxford University, and in other places. In 
November and December, 1892, they were recon¬ 
structed and delivered before the Meadville Theo¬ 
logical School and the citizens of Meadville, Pa. 
Of this last use of them some explanation should 
be made : — 

The Rev. Adin Ballou, of Hopedale, Mass., left 
a legacy for the promotion of Christian Socialism, 
to the interests of which he had devoted a life of 
energetic philanthropy. Through some legal de¬ 
fects in the bequest, the courts refused to execute 
his will, and the property passed into the hands of 
his daughter, Mrs. Abbie Ballou Heywood. De¬ 
termined to carry out her father’s purposes, Mrs. 



IV 


PREFACE. 


Heywood made over the entire amount to the 
trustees of the Meadville Theological School, to be 
held by them as a trust fund for the establishment 
and maintenance of “ The Adin Ballou Lec¬ 
tureship of Practical Christian Sociology.” 
The design of the founder is thus expressed in 
her own words : — 

“The purpose of this offer is to secure the annual 
delivery of a course of lectures, by the most satisfactory 
talent that can be obtained, upon the social aspects of 
the religion of Christ, and the consequent duty and 
importance of applying the principles and spirit of 
that religion to the intercourse and conduct of man 
with man, in all the activities and relations of life. 
In these lectures special attention shall be paid to such 
subjects, for example, as ‘ The Barbarism of War and 
the consequent claims of the cause of Peace,’ ‘The 
Extinction of the Evils of Intemperance,’ ‘ The Proper 
Relation of the Sexes, including the true Doctrine of 
Marriage and Divorce,’ ‘The Higher Education and 
Complete Enfranchisement of Woman,’ ‘The Adjust¬ 
ment and Harmonization of the Relations between Cap¬ 
ital and Labor,’ ‘The Prevention of and Remedy for 
Poverty,’ ‘The Care and Reformation of Criminals,’ 
‘ The Amelioration and Improvement of the Condition 
of the Unfortunate and Perishing Classes,’ including 
in their full range all topics calculated to enhance the 
well-being and happiness of mankind and to fashion 


PREFACE. 


v 


human society after the Christian ideal of the kingdom 
of heaven on earth. 

“ These lectures, or such of them as may be deemed 
most valuable by the President and Board of Instruc¬ 
tion, shall be published from time to time, and sent, 
free of expense, to other Theological Schools, and to 
leading educational institutions, libraries, etc., to the 
end that their usefulness may be extended as far and 
wide as possible. 

“ It is furthermore my express wish and intention 
that the contemplated lectureship shall be based upon 
the distinct and positive recognition of the eternal 
excellency of the religion of Christ , in its fundamental 
truth and essential spirit , as taught and exemplified in 
the Scriptures of the New Testament, and as interpreted 
by the light of the advancing intelligence of mankind, 
and that its administration shall be absolutely impartial 
and free, regardless alike of denominational peculiar¬ 
ities and limitations, and of all artificial distinctions of 
race, sex, and nationality. 

“ This offer is made with the full expectation and 
assurance that, if accepted, the endowment involved will 
be held sacred to the purpose for which it is designed, 
and in the earnest hope that the work of human im¬ 
provement and social regeneration, so dear to the heart 
of my beloved father, will be advanced by the instru¬ 
mentality it provides for and ordains, and that his name 
and influence for good in the world may be conserved 
and perpetuated unto many generations.” 


VI 


PREFACE. 


This volume comprises the first course of lec¬ 
tures upon the Ad in Ballou foundation. A por¬ 
tion of one of them has appeared in print; the 
remainder is now for the first time published. 

My own deepest convictions are so clearly ex¬ 
pressed in the words quoted above that I have 
found no difficulty in following the lines laid down 
by the founder. By the study and observation of 
many years, I have been confirmed in the belief 
that the Christian law, when rightly interpreted, 
contains the solution of the social problem. I 
believe that Christianity not only holds up before 
us a beautiful ideal, but that it presents the only 
theory of industrial and social order which can 
be made to work. To the arguments which fol¬ 
low, in support of this opinion, I ask the serious 
attention of all men of good-will. 

W. G. 

First Congregational Church, 

Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 22, 1893. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I. The Christianization of Society ... 1 

II. Economics and Christian Ethics . . . .25 

III. Property in Land.55 

IV. Property in General.86 

V. The Labor Question.115 

VI. The Collapse of Competition .... 146 
VII. Cooperation the Logic of Christianty . . 174 

VIII. The Reorganization of Industry . . . 204 

IX. Scientific Socialism.242 

X. Christian Socialism.275 















■ 

' 

• ' . „. I ! il \I 























.. 
































































TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


I. 

THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 

The end of Christianity is twofold, a perfect 
man in a perfect society. These purposes are 
never separated; they cannot be separated. No 
man can be redeemed and saved alone; no commu¬ 
nity can be reformed and elevated save as the in¬ 
dividuals of which it is composed are regenerated. 
The law and the gospel address themselves to the 
conscience and the affection of the man, but they 
address him as a member of the social organism, 
and the response that he makes must be made 
through the medium of that organism. What 
says the law to him ? Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself. Perfection requires perfect 
obedience to the second commandment as well as 
to the first. If there were a man who had no 
neighbor, he could not obey God’s law; he could 
not be a man, in any proper sense of the word; he 
could not exercise the powers and functions of the 
human nature; the perfection of manhood would 



2 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


be utterly beyond his attainment. This vital and 
necessary relation of the individual to society lies 
at the basis of the Christian conception of life. 
Christianity would create a perfect society, and to 
this end it must produce perfect men; it would 
bring forth perfect men, and to this end it must 
construct a perfect society. 

Christ’s first word as a preacher was, Repent. 
That was addressed to the individual. It was the 
reproof of his sin; it was the summons to that choice 
of righteousness which is the prerogative of a free 
personality. But his next word was connected 
with this by a copula that we must never break: 
“ Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 
The opportunity, the motive, the condition of 
repentance is the presence of a divine society, of 
which the penitent, by virtue of his penitence, at 
once becomes a member. 

The first commandment of the new dispensation 
is, therefore, a commandment with promise, and 
the commandment can never be divorced from the 
promise. Life implies an environment, the contin¬ 
uous adjustment of external and internal relations. 
Everything that lives, lives in some element to which 
its nature is adapted. The fish lives in the water; 
the man lives in an atmosphere. The spiritual life 
is no exception to this law. When a man is born of 
the spirit, he needs a spiritual atmosphere to breathe 
as truly as he needs the vital air the moment he is 
born into the world. True it is that except a man 
be born from above he cannot see the kingdom of 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY . 3 

God; but equally true it is that if there were not 
a kingdom of God for him to be born into, his 
birthday would be the day of his death. To bid 
a man repent without furnishing him at the same 
time a spiritual society in which he may live and 
move and have his being would be like ordering a 
man who was stifling in bad air to betake himself 
to a vacuum. Such unreasoning cruelty our Lord 
does not countenance; when he calls men to new 
life he surrounds them with the conditions in which 
the new life is possible. 

When Jesus commissions the twelve and sends 
them forth, he puts into their mouths the same 
message that he himself first proclaimed, save that 
he omits the first word “Repent.” “As ye go, 
preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 
I am not inclined to attach any peculiar significance 
to this omission. Doubtless the word of repentance 
and reformation was part of their message, though 
not here specified. They were bidden to preach 
the truth which he had taught them; what they had 
heard in the ear they were to proclaim upon the 
housetops, and the call to repentance was surely 
included in this. Nevertheless, the fact remains 
that in this commission the emphasis is put upon 
the proclamation of the kingdom of God. “ As 
ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is 
at hand.” It is not a remote and dubious infer¬ 
ence that the regeneration of the individual and 
the regeneration of society are coordinate inter¬ 
ests ; that the one cannot be secured without the 


4 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


other; that, whatever the order of logic may be, 
there can be no difference in time between the 
two kinds of work; that we are to labor as con¬ 
stantly and as diligently for the improvement of 
the social order as for the conversion of man. 

The success of our Christian work largely de¬ 
pends, indeed, upon maintaining the equilibrium 
between these two kinds of activity. Progress is 
often conditioned upon preserving the balance of 
equal forces; many of the losses and delays of 
civilization are due to the failure to secure this 
equipoise. The Greek republics sacrificed the in¬ 
dividual to the state, and perished for that fault; 
the modern radical democracy has sacrificed the 
state to the individual, and threatens us with de¬ 
struction from this cause. In practical states¬ 
manship, it is not easy to adjust the opposing 
claims of liberty and order. The Roman Catholic 
church minimizes the individual and magnifies the 
ecclesiastical organization ; many of our Protest¬ 
ant churches foster an excessive development of 
individualism and greatly undervalue social forces 
and institutional methods. 

There is need among us, then, of emphasizing the 
social side of our Christian work, of pointing out 
the fact that Christianity gives a law to society as 
well as to the individual. We are called to con¬ 
vert men, and we are called at the same time and 
with equal authority to furnish them a Christian 
society to live in after they are converted. It is 
idle and even cruel for us to cry, “ Repent,” unless 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 5 


we can truly say at the same time, “ The kingdom 
of heaven is at hand.” 

In a recent admirable essay upon “ Social 
Ethics ” I find this passage: “ [Christianity] 
teaches that men owe it to each other to labor, not 
first for the improvement of outward conditions, 
but first for the worth and goodness of men them¬ 
selves, according to the high and definite standards 
of the Christian character. Christianity is not 
satisfied with mere improvement upon the existing 
order, nor will it turn aside and expend its ener¬ 
gies on reforms which affect only the surface of 
society.” In terms this is exactly true ; neverthe¬ 
less, it needs to be supplemented by a fuller state¬ 
ment. There are certain outward conditions, 
certain forms of social organization, which tend to 
emphasize and promote the worth and goodness 
of men themselves ; and there are other outward 
conditions which tend to belittle and discourage 
personal worth and goodness. There is a social 
philosophy, an economical philosophy, which dis¬ 
parages and ignores character; it gets itself in¬ 
corporated into outward conditions; it makes the 
problem of arousing and developing men themselves 
a very difficult business. Now, while the ends of 
character are above all things precious, because 
they are above all things precious, we need to en¬ 
courage those forms of social organization in which 
the value of character shall be rightly estimated, 
and men shall not be reckoned merely as counters 
in the great game of material exchanges. 


6 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


The Christianization of society is, therefore, a 
part, and a large part, of the calling of the disci¬ 
ples and servants of Jesus Christ. The kingdoms 
of this world are to become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and of his Christ; and the phrase includes 
not merely the kingdom of Siam, and the kingdom 
of Madagascar, and the kingdom of Dahomey, but 
the kingdom of commerce, and the kingdom of in¬ 
dustry, and the kingdom of fashion, and the king¬ 
dom of learning, and the kingdom of amusement; 
every great department of society is to be pervaded 
by the Christian spirit and governed by Christian 
law. This is the end that we are to set before 
ourselves, and toward the achievement of which 
we are to direct our energies. 

1. The Christianization of society involves the 
Christianization of the prevailing social senti¬ 
ments. “ Social sentiment,” says Dr. Bascom, “ is 
the pervasive j>rotoplasm of general and individ¬ 
ual life. From this must come the constructive 
and beneficent forces of the state, and largely the 
impulses which govern each individual within the 
state.” 1 

The best society differs from the worst in its 
practices, its institutions, its laws, but more deeply 
and radically in its sentiments. It is because song 
is the voice of sentiment that the philosopher said, 
“ Let me make the songs of a people, and I care 
not who makes its laws.” Now, there are social 
sentiments that are distinctively Christian, and 
1 The Words of Christ, p. 198. 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 


others that are as clearly unchristian, and it is 
part of our work to propagate those that are 
Christian, and extirpate those that are not. Re¬ 
spect for character more than for rank or wealth is 
a Christian sentiment. “ A man’s life consisteth 
not in the abundance of the things which he pos- 
sesseth,” said the Teacher. Honor for honest 
industry is a Christian sentiment; no follower of 
the Judean Carpenter can be in doubt about that. 
Compassion for the suffering and the helpless is a 
Christian sentiment. Noblesse oblige is a Chris¬ 
tian sentiment; who was it that washed his disci¬ 
ples’ feet? The prevalence in society of senti¬ 
ments like these makes it peaceful, pure, and 
stimulating; every soul that breathes this atmos¬ 
phere is comforted and quickened and ennobled 
by it. On the other hand, the sentiments opposed 
to these, when they prevail in society, as they often 
do, fill it with envy and strife and bitterness; 
every generous feeling is chilled by such a social 
atmosphere. Now, it is quite possible for us, in our 
social intercourse, to aid in cultivating these Chris¬ 
tian sentiments, and in exterminating those which 
are unchristian. We are called, as disciples of 
Christ, to the frank and hearty utterance of Chris¬ 
tian sentiments, and to the equally positive repu¬ 
diation of those that are unchristian. If you 
respect the upright brakeman more than the gam¬ 
bling and swindling general manager, say it and 
show it. If you feel that the true-hearted shop¬ 
girl who supports herself and her mother by her 


8 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


labor is more to be admired than the giggling 
flirt who is doing nothing but waste her father’s 
substance in frivolous follies, make that feeling 
clearly manifest. Opportunities are hourly occur¬ 
ring for the utterance of the thoughts and feelings 
by which our estimate of life and conduct is re¬ 
vealed, and a manly avowal of the truth that is in 
us, that has become part of ourselves, often has a 
most salutary influence. We are not merely to 
think on the things that are honest and pure and 
lovely and of good report; we are to stand up for 
them, to declare our love for them, to defend them 
by word and act when others cast contempt upon 
them. There is a great deal of good missionary 
work to be done in reforming the sentiments of 
the society in which we live, — to be done in 
drawing-rooms and church-aisles, in school-rooms 
and shops and street-cars, wherever men and 
women meet and greet one another; and here, 
as much as anywhere, our Master wants brave 
confessors and true witnesses. 

2. Sentiments that have crystallized into max¬ 
ims or formularies take the shape of theories. The 
relations of individuals and of classes in society 
are defined by social theories ; there are theories 
of social duty and obligation, some of which con¬ 
form to the Christian law, and many of which do 
not. One very large part of our duty as citizens 
of the kingdom of heaven is to test these social 
theories by the law of that kingdom ; to uphold 
those that agree with it, and to renounce and con- 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY 9 

demn those that do not. Bad practice has its 
roots in bad philosophy; and the social disorder 
and mischief that abound will never be corrected 
until the false social philosophy which breeds them 
is exposed. A social theory was in vogue not very 
long ago, in all parts of Christendom, that some 
human beings are born to be the chattels of other 
human beings; that this division of the race into 
masters and slaves is one of the laws of nature, 
and part of the plan of Providence. That theory 
was contrary to the great doctrine of human 
brotherhood, which is the corner-stone of Christian 
society. It was necessary to kill that theory be¬ 
fore society could be christianized. 

There is a theory which finds wide acceptance in 
these days, to the effect that when husband and 
wife conclude that they cannot get along very well 
together they ought to be divorced. This theory 
has been making great havoc in society of late, 
breaking up homes and weakening the bonds of 
the family, which is the very foundation of society. 
It expressly contradicts the Christian law; and 
one of the most urgent duties resting upon Chris¬ 
tian disciples at the present time is to expose the 
sophistry and wickedness of this doctrine of easy 
divorce, and lift up against it Christ’s law of the 
family. 

Not a few pernicious social theories must be cor¬ 
rected and counteracted by the application of the 
Christian law; and, on the other hand, there are 
many wise and salutary social maxims that ought 


10 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


to be diligently inculcated, the truth and wisdom 
of which will gradually be made manifest if they 
are faithfully taught. The theory that all prop¬ 
erty is held in trust for societythat there is no 
such thing as absolute ownership ; that every pos¬ 
sessor of wealth, no matter how lawfully he may 
have gained it, holds it as a steward or a trustee, 
and is bound to use it for the best interest of the 
society in which he lives, — this is a part of the 
clear teaching of Christ which must be steadily en¬ 
forced. Society will never be christianized until 
this truth is accepted and reduced to practice. 

These examples, which might be multiplied, and 
will be in the chapters that follow, show that there 
is a Christian philosophy of social relations which 
differs widely in many respects from the prevail¬ 
ing social philosophy; and that our business as 
servants of Christ is to challenge the sensual and 
selfish philosophy so widely prevalent, and to sup¬ 
plant it by the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven. 

3. When social theories are reduced to practice, 
we call them customs. A large part of social life 
is customary. Our sentiments and theories are 
organized into these living forms, and are thus 
unconsciously communicated from one life to an¬ 
other, and transmitted from generation to gen¬ 
eration. Many of these social customs are already 
Christian, and among the mightiest conquests that 
Christianity has achieved is the silent and gradual 
transformation of the usages and conventions of 
society by the inward working of its power. How 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 11 

much there is in our customary life that expresses 
good will! How many of our forms of etiquette 
are only transcriptions of the law of love ! And 
not only benevolence, but justice and purity and 
modesty and many other Christian virtues find ex¬ 
pression in social conventions to which we have 
been habituated all our lives. Probably none of 
us is aware of the extent to which his life has 
been influenced by these organized forms of life 
which surround him like an atmosphere. Yet 
there are many existing social customs which are 
not Christian, — which are the reverse of Chris¬ 
tian. There are still vast spaces of this customary 
life which need to be subdued and informed by 
the spirit of Christ. Customs that are pernicious, 
destructive, heathenish, abound in most commu¬ 
nities, and there is need that the law of Christ 
should be applied to them, and that they should 
be made to feel the steady weight of its condemna¬ 
tion. Yet, in judging all these, we must be care¬ 
ful to discern the real meaning of the law, and 
beware how we substitute for it our own whims 
and prejudices. There are various evil customs, 
like the drinking usages, and the gambling prac¬ 
tices, and the unhealthy excesses of all sorts, which 
still prevail in some quarters, and against which 
the Christian moralist must utter a clear testi¬ 
mony ; and there are other social customs, inno¬ 
cent enough in themselves, but liable to abuse, 
and of these he must learn to speak with discrimi¬ 
nation. Perhaps there is no part of his work in 


12 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


which a judicial temper is more necessary than in 
the criticism of social customs. He must make 
the truth he speaks manifest to the consciences of 
those to whom he speaks ; he must beware lest he 
make that to be sin which is not sin, and load the 
moral sense of those who hear him with a burden 
that they will not bear. Great wisdom is needed 
here, but the law of Christ applies to this realm 
of life as well as to every other, and it must be 
possible to bring its truth to bear upon the cus¬ 
toms of society so as to condemn those that are 
evil, and approve those that are good. 

4. Customs that are organized under definite 
and permanent forms are institutions. The insti¬ 
tutions of civilized society are its vital organs ; it 
lives in them and by them. The family is the 
first of these ; the church, the schools, the various 
organizations for industrial purposes, for culture, 
for pleasure, for charity, are numbered among 
them. For every one of these institutions the 
great Lawgiver has a law; it is for his disciples 
to discern and reveal the manner of its applica¬ 
tion. Most of these established forms of social 
life recognize to some extent the ethics of Christ, 
and embody more or less perfectly the precepts 
and principles of his teaching in their organic life. 
Yet there is not one of them that completely and 
consistently conforms to his law; not one of them 
that does not need to be christianized. The 
church is supposed to be organized upon Christ’s 
words, and to be the embodiment of his life. Of 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 13 


the ideal church, of the invisible church, this is 
true ; of the visible church it is only partially true. 
. A great deal of the teaching, the administration, 
the corporate life of the church is unchristian; 
the kingdom of God, which Jesus came to establish 
in the world, is divided against itself and crippled 
in its growth in many places through organizations 
calling themselves churches. True it is that the 
church, in most communities, contains the greater 
part of the moral force existing in those communi¬ 
ties ; the only hope for the reformation of society 
is in the church; if society is christianized, it must 
be done mainly through the church ; yet it is no 
less true that the church is everywhere part of the 
thing to be reformed, and that the institution 
which represents Christ in the world and speaks 
for him is an institution that discerns his mind 
but in part, and that reflects his spirit as in a mir¬ 
ror darkly. Every church needs prayerfully to 
ask itself how much of its doctrine, its discipline, 
its practice, needs christianizing. Part of its busi¬ 
ness is to criticise the social order; but it should 
never forget, in its criticisms of the social order, 
that judgment should begin at the house of God. 
Surely the church that deliberately proposes to be 
a church of the wealthy and cultivated classes; 
that makes no provision for the poor in its assem¬ 
blies ; that tolerates arrangements in its place of 
worship under which the poor could not find a 
home in it if they would ; that openly says, “ These 
poor people can come to our church, of course, if 


14 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


they wish to come, but frankly we think that they 
would enjoy themselves more in a mission chapel 
down on one of the back streets, and we shall be 
happy to contribute toward the building of such 
a chapel for them,” — a church like this really 
needs to do a good deal of home mission work 
within its own four walls before it will be pre¬ 
pared to assist very materially in the Christianiza¬ 
tion of society. 

There are many other features of the social life 
of some of our churches which very imperfectly 
conform to the Christian ideal, and those who are 
responsible for the conduct of the churches ought 
to consider more carefully than they sometimes 
do what manner of organization a Christian church 
ought to be; what should be the relation of its 
members one to another, what the ordering of its 
assemblies, what the spirit of its appeal to the 
world outside. There is a sense in which a church 
may think too much about itself: it may expend 
all its energies in building up its own organiza¬ 
tion ; it may care for those that are without only 
in so far as there is a fair prospect of bringing 
them within, and so adding to its own popularity 
and power. Human nature often takes on this 
phase, in churches as well as in secret lodges and 
political parties. But there is another way in 
which a church does well to think much about 
itself : it ought continually to compare its own 
internal life with the Sermon on the Mount; it 
ought to seek to develop its life in accordance with 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY . 15 

that high, unworldly standard. Every true pastor 
should be admonished to keep this matter very 
near his own heart. The spirit of the world out¬ 
side is always insensibly pervading the church ; 
its pride, its indifference, its exclusiveness, its 
methods of competition, first steal in and hide, and 
then stalk in and take possession; and there is 
need of coming back to first principles very often, 
and of reminding ourselves whose disciples we are, 
and what is the nature of the kingdom that he 
came to found. And the earnest pastor will find 
it in his heart to say very often, Dearly beloved 
brethren, let us remember that we are Christians ; 
let us try to behave in the house of God as though 
we were Christians ; let us show all men, rich or 
poor, who come into our place of worship that we 
are Christians ; let us meet one another on the street 
as though we were Christians; let us put ourselves 
into such relations with all other churches that 
they shall know that we are Christians ; let us 
speak to our neighbors round about us a mes¬ 
sage of such invincible friendliness that they shall 
be constrained to believe that we are Christians, 
that we have been with Jesus. If the life that 
is in us is thus manifestly the life of Christ, and 
the bond that unites us is the love of Christ, we 
shall surely be able to do some good work in 
christianizing society. We can never accomplish 
much as a church in this direction unless we can 
make it evident that Christ is not only the Head, 
but also the Heart of the body that claims to rep¬ 
resent him. 


16 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


If the church needs thus to apply to itself the 
perfect standard of Christ’s law in order that its 
faults may be corrected and its social life properly 
developed, it is not probable that any other of the 
institutions of society could wisely dispense with 
such criticism. To bring all these institutions 
into conformity with the Christian law, and to fill 
them all with the Christian spirit, is the work be¬ 
fore us, — a work so vast that we might well turn 
away from it in despair, had we not the assurance 
that when, in the regeneration, the Son of Man 
shall come in his glory, these kingdoms, too, shall 
belong to him. 

5. Above all the social institutions the state is 
supreme. It is as truly divine as the church is, 
and its scope is more comprehensive. It is the 
business of the state to declare and maintain upon 
the earth the righteousness of God; could there be 
a more august vocation ? Christ as Prophet and 
Priest is the Head of the church, as King he is the 
Head of the state. His kingly office is his supreme 
office. Messiah, the King, he always claimed to 
be. True it is that the King has not yet come to 
his own; but a great voice has been heard saying, 
“ I will overturn, overturn, overturn it . . . until 
he come whose right it is, and I will give it him.” 
The state is to be christianized. Government is 
to be christianized, not by the restoration of the 
temporal power, not by calling back the Pope or 
the Puritans, but by the exaltation and coronation 
of the spiritual power, the true spiritual power, in 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 17 

the hearts and lives of the people. Most true is 
the word of Immanuel H. Fichte, “ Christianity is 
destined some day to be the inner organizing power 
of the state.” 1 

Our laws are to be christianized; the time is 
coming when they will express the perfect justice 
and the perfect beneficence of the Christian law. 

Our notion of what government ought to be is 
to be christianized. For when “ All-of-us,” or 
even The-great-majority-of-us, get into our heads 
Christ’s notion of what it means to rule, we shall 
find some better thing to do than simply to keep 
The-rest-of-us from breaking into our houses and 
robbing our hen-roosts. When the King of us all 
does come to his own, you will discover that he is 
something more than a policeman. 

The administration of government is to be chris¬ 
tianized. We are to have in our magistracies, in 
our places of power and trust and judgment, up¬ 
right men, honorable men, — when the word of the 
Son of Jesse shall be verified in all the earth: 

“ One that ruletli over men righteously, 

That ruleth in the fear of God, 

He shall he as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, 

A morning without clouds.” 

Doubtless this millennial perfection of state is yet 
a great way off, but it is the goal toward which we 
are journeying, and we are to keep it always before 
our thought, and to stretch forward unto it with 
dauntless faith and unfailing purpose. This work 
1 Quoted by Bascom, The Words of Christ, p. 191. 


18 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


of christianizing our governments, national, state, 
municipal, seems, indeed, a herculean labor; but it 
is one of the most immediate and most urgent of 
all our Christian duties. Into that realm of sophis¬ 
try and perversity and brutality which men call 
politics we are to pour a steady stream of honest 
testimony and unselfish effort; the viler is that 
pool, the greater is the need that a strong and 
steady current of intelligence and conscience flow 
through it for its cleansing. The kingdom of God 
can never come in its power while governments are 
corrupt, and the spirit of party makes men reck¬ 
less of the interests of truth and justice. One of 
the clear signs of its coming, when it comes, will 
be better government; and those who pray for its 
coming must use the power that they have in 
bringing it nearer. Inasmuch as government is 
the most comprehensive and the most powerful 
of all the institutions of society; inasmuch as it 
presses upon the moral life of men in a thousand 
ways continually, shaping their ideals, directing 
their choices, calling forth or repressing their activ¬ 
ities, it is evident that the christianizing of society 
will be greatly promoted or greatly hindered by 
the existing government. No one who desires to 
behold the progress of Christian morality can be 
indifferent to the character of the government 
under which he lives. 

So much as this must then be involved in this 
promised Christianization of society, — that the 
sentiments, theories, customs, institutions, laws, and 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 19 


governments of the people are to be penetrated 
with the Christian spirit, founded on Christian 
principles, ruled by the Christian law. This is 
what is meant by the coming to earth of the king¬ 
dom of heaven. We pray every day that it may 
come, but we do not by this prayer imply that its 
advent is still to be awaited. He who taught us 
to utter this prayer had already proclaimed, “ The 
kingdom of heaven is at hand! ” It was present 
then, this divine society, this kingdom of truth and 
love; and the centuries have but enlarged its do¬ 
minion and confirmed its peaceful sway. Mighty 
have been the changes wrought through its gentle 
influence; the world in which we live is a vastly 
better world than the brightest dream of the best 
man who had lived in the world two thousand 
years ago. Through faithful witnesses, through 
brave confessors, through loyal soldiers of the 
cross, Christian truth and love have been steadily 
gaining possession of the hearts of men and of 
the life of society; the opinions, the feelings, the 
maxims, the usages, the organized activities of men 
have been gradually suffused with Christian mo¬ 
tives and principles; the leaven has been working 
silently but pervasively upon the mass. When we 
behold what has been done already, we return with 
faith and courage to the work which remains to do. 

Only let us keep it steadily before us that this 
is our work. There is a conception of Christian 
service which differs from this very widely. In 
this conception, the office of Christ and the work 


20 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


of liis church is merely to gather the few that can 
be saved out of the wreck of humanity, and let the 
rest go to destruction. There is no hope of the 
transformation of society through the use of any 
agencies or forces now known to us; society must 
go more and more swiftly to decay; social sen¬ 
timents, philosophies, practices, institutions, will 
grow more corrupt and godless continually; it is 
useless for us to try to improve them; all that is 
left for us is to get as many as we can out of this 
evil society, keep them apart from it as much as 
we can while they live, and see them safe through 
this world to heaven. 

Now, this is a theory with which it is necessary 
for us to come at once to a definite understanding. 
If this theory is true, all that we have been saying 
is visionary and chimerical. No man who believes 
this theory works for the Christianization of soci¬ 
ety ; he does not hope for it. He may labor for 
the conversion of souls, but he has no faith in the 
regeneration of social sentiments, practices, institu¬ 
tions. It is the destruction, not the sanctification, 
of the social order that he is looking for. He may 
bid men repent; but if he tells them that the king¬ 
dom of heaven is at hand, he does not mean by 
these words what we have been assuming them to 
mean, that it is actually here, growing as the mus¬ 
tard-tree grows, from frailest germ to goodliest 
stature, — silently pervading and transforming the 
human world as the leaven pervades and trans¬ 
forms the mass; he means, rather, that there is 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 21 

presently to be expected a great revolution by 
which the existing order shall be demolished and 
swept out of existence. He may have a kind of 
missionary zeal, but his work will be purely indi¬ 
vidual, and not in any broad sense institutional; 
for no existing social institution except the church 
does he entertain any hope, and not even for that. 

It is evident at once that the vocation of a Chris¬ 
tian church, as conceived by one who holds this 
theory, or any theory akin to this, will differ widely 
from the one assumed in this discussion. It is evi¬ 
dent that the activities of two churches, one of 
which holds one of these theories, and the other 
the opposite, will follow widely different lines. The 
fundamental commands of Christ will be inter¬ 
preted by one in a sense radically unlike that of 
the other. 

Take, for example, the commandment, “ Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.” 
What does this signify ? Where is the kingdom of 
God? If we are to seek it, some hint must be 
given us of the quarter in which we are to look. Is 
it present, accessible, visible to men ? So Christ 
seems to teach. It is “ at hand,” he says. We 
are not to be rummaging the centuries and scouring 
the continents in search of it; it is near us. We 
are not to be crying, Lo, here! or Lo, there ! for 
the kingdom of God is among us. Yet he implies 
that some spiritual perception is needed to discern 
it. Except a man be born from above he cannot 
see the kingdom of God. Not merely will he fail to 


22 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


enter into it; lie will not even perceive it. One must 
be naturalized in that divine society, or he may not 
be aware of its existence; he may be living in the 
midst of it, and not know it. There are others be¬ 
sides the young man at Dothan who need to have 
their eyes opened that they may perceive the pres¬ 
ence of spiritual hosts round about them. 

This is why we are bidden to seek the kingdom 
of God, — not because it is remote, or hidden, but 
because our vision needs training; the power of 
discerning it is what we want most. It is here ; 
the one thing needful is that we should realize its 
presence and fall into line with its mighty on¬ 
goings. 

A vital question is this, whether the Parousia of 
Christ is his presence or his future arrival from 
some distant scene; our characters and our services 
will be greatly affected by the answer we give it. 
If we believe that he is here, now, building his 
kingdom, our thoughts, our hopes, our labors, will 
take on forms quite different from those which they 
would assume if we believed that he was not here, 
but that his coming was to be awaited, in some in¬ 
definite future. If he is here building his kingdom, 
we shall surely find traces of his working, signs of 
his power, — such as we have just been consider¬ 
ing. When we find these, we shall thank God and 
take courage ; we shall see that our daily prayer is 
being answered; we shall work with new hope for 
the fuller bringing in of the glory of the kingdom. 
If, on the other hand, we assume that he is not here, 


THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 23 

we shall not be looking for any tokens of his pres¬ 
ence ; the changes that are taking place will not 
reveal him to our thought; we shall see no beauty 
in them ; we shall ascribe them to other agencies ; 
we shall regard them with indifference, perhaps 
with critical contempt. Here lies the peril. It is 
a fearful thing to repudiate and decry what God 
hath wrought with infinite love and wisdom through 
the long centuries of his patience. It is a dismal 
and dreadful spectacle to see men standing in the 
dawn of this new day and crying that there is no 
light. Strangely do they honor their Master and 
Lord when they fail to discern anything but evil 
in the bright displays of his power of which the 
world is full. 

Let us learn that the calling of the Christian 
disciple is no such dispiriting vocation. We are 
not the forlorn hope of a lost cause, struggling with 
desperate valor to rescue a few helpless prisoners 
out of the hands of a victorious foe. We are not 
the followers of a Leader who has signally failed 
in his mission, and who now finds no resource but 
to destroy a world that he is not strong enough to 
save. We believe that the kingdom, and the do¬ 
minion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the 
whole heaven belong to the servants of our King; 
that his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; that 
all dominions shall serve and obey him, and that 
he is steadily and surely advancing to the posses¬ 
sion of the inheritance that belongs to him ; and we 
deem it our duty to claim it for him, and to do what 


24 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


we can, while we are here, to bring the day when at 
the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things 
in heaven and things in earth, and things under the 
earth, and every tongue shall confess that He is 
Lord, to the glory of God the Father 


II. 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 

The warrior bold whose heart has been stirred 
with the enthusiasm of humanity, and who goes 
forth to do battle for the Christianization of society, 
finds his first and perhaps his most formidable foe 
in the great realm of industry and trade. All that 
great department of life is yet in large measure 
unsubdued by the power of the Christ. His august 
voice has been heard in its noisy marts, and his whip 
of small cords has driven forth some of the worst 
of the money-changers; the influence of Christian 
ethics upon the industrial and commercial realm 
has been perceptible and beneficent; but that 
realm still remains in great part intractable, if not 
hostile, to his gentle sway. The desire of property, 
which, if it is not the earliest of the constitutional 
desires to find development, soon becomes stronger 
and more universal than any of the rest, is the one 
overmastering passion of modern society. Our 
individualistic regime has given it free play ; it has 
been the great builder of civilization on its material 
side ; it has cleared the forests, drained the swamps, 
dug the mines, bridged the rivers, set the spindles 
and the pistcns and the lathes and the trip-hammers 


26 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


in motion, built the great cities, covered the conti¬ 
nents with networks of steel, and turned the ocean 
into a ferry. Great are the gains of this master pas¬ 
sion; swift and splendid are the triumphs it has 
won; but the very suddenness of these achieve¬ 
ments should seem to us ominous. Enduring good is 
not wont thus to spring up, gourd-like, in a night. 
It begins to be evident to thoughtful minds that the 
social structure which our unbridled egoism has 
been building is not in all respects well built; that 
its foundations are insecure, and that its walls 
are full of inflammable and explosive material; 
that unless something is done, and that speedily, 
to protect and preserve it, the catastrophe may be 
sudden and terrible. A single egoistic passion 
like this, when it takes possession of a people or an 
age, can create wonders, and it can destroy them 
quite as speedily. The problem now before us is, 
whether any higher power can be invoked to save 
the good that the greed of gain has brought forth 
upon the earth. This is the problem that confronts 
those who labor for the Christianization of society. 

The enormous inequalities of condition and pos¬ 
sessions existing and constantly increasing among 
us foster, on both sides of the great gulf, — among 
the rich as well as among the poor, — tempers and 
sentiments which are the reverse of Christian. 
Contempt on the one side, envy on the other, fill 
the social atmosphere with feverish and inflamma¬ 
ble influences. Inequalities perhaps as great have 
existed in other ages; but never before such in- 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 27 

equalities in a society founded on the doctrine that 
all men are created equal in rights and privileges; 
never before in a society in which the poor had the 
spelling-book and the newspaper and the ballot in 
their hands ; never before in a society where the 
penniless walked every day before show windows 
wherein all the luxuries of all the climes were pub¬ 
licly displayed. Between the helots of Greece and 
their masters, between the slaves and the citizens 
of Rome, there was really no contrast, because there 
was no comparison ; they were supposed to belong 
to distinct orders of creation. Aristotle classes 
the slaves of a household as belonging with the 
tools, the instruments of production. There are 
tools with souls, and tools without souls ; yet the 
soul of this tool is not, he says, like the soul of its 
owner; it is a soul without a will. Ulpian, the 
Stoic, speaks of “ slaves and other animals.” Even 
the lofty mind of Marcus Aurelius has no higher 
thought about them; they are enumerated along 
with the cattle. Such was the universal sentiment, 
and the slaves themselves could scarcely have dis¬ 
puted the theory of society that had sent them un¬ 
der the yoke. If they had nothing but chains and 
servitude, and their lords and masters had nothing 
but idleness and luxury, that was the order of na¬ 
ture, the condition to which they were born, and 
from which it was idle, if not impious, to try to 
escape. Inequalities in that ancient society could 
not, therefore, have been such a constant source of 
irritation as they are in modern society. Servile 


28 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


insurrections did, indeed, now and then occur, 
showing that these tools with souls were sometimes 
skeptical about the philosophy that consigned them 
to bondage, and were prone to think, in spite of 
Aristotle, that they had wills of their own ; but the 
voice of the great world denounced their preten¬ 
sions and drowned their protests, and they soon 
laid down their weapons and returned to the servile 
condition from which they had vainly striven to rise. 

It is a very different undertaking to convince 
the poor laborers of America and England that the 
social chasm which divides them from their lux¬ 
urious neighbors is one that has been fixed by na¬ 
ture. They have been taught equality of rights; 
they cannot easily accept so great inequality of 
conditions and possessions. And the spectacle of 
wealth and want steadily increasing side by side, 
wealth growing more insolent and want more hope¬ 
less, year by year, fills them with discontent and 
bitterness. I will not now discuss the question 
how far these poor laborers are themselves respon¬ 
sible for their poverty. I only note the fact that 
the poverty of great multitudes exists in the midst 
of rapidly growing wealth ; and that a consequence 
of this inequality is social alienation and enmity, 
which renders the Christianization of society a 
very difficult task. 

Not only does this strife exist between the rich 
and the poor, between the employing and the em¬ 
ployed ; the commercial world is also the arena of 
sharp and bitter conflicts. Rivals in trade are seek- 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS . 29 

ing to overreach or undermine one another ; com¬ 
petitors are struggling for exclusive privileges; 
merchants are trying to force one another out of 
the market; great companies or corporations are 
sometimes striving to crush one another, and some¬ 
times combining to crush the smaller corporations. 
On all sides, a fierce greed and a conscienceless pur¬ 
pose keep society in a restless, jealous, antipathetic 
temper. 

Surely this great realm of industry and traffic, 
with its glaring inequalities of condition, its ex¬ 
tremes of wealth and poverty, its bitter resent¬ 
ments and envyings, its greedy rivalries and com¬ 
petitions, is yet far from being christianized. The 
law of this realm is not yet, “ Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself.” The commandment which 
bids us look not after our own interests exclusively, 
but after the interests of others also, is not a rul¬ 
ing maxim in this kingdom of exchanges. 

Is it possible to christianize this realm of toil 
and traffic ? Is it reasonable to hope that the time 
will ever come when the great majority of those 
who buy and sell, who hire work and work for 
hire, will put away the weapons of their warfare, 
and endeavor to do to others as they would have 
others do to them ? Doubtless the prospect of such 
a day is distant enough to be enchanting; but it 
were a sorry confession that no such thing could 
be hoped for. That would signify that Christianity 
is a failure. No more damaging accusation could 
be made than this. If our King stands powerless 


30 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


before the power of Mammon, we cannot crown 
him Lord of all. Some of us are not yet ready to 
make this confession. We still profess to believe 
that the kingdoms of this world belong to him, and 
are yet to be brought under his dominion. And 
they to whom the meaning of Christ’s mission has 
been clearly made manifest are girding themselves 
now as never before for the conflict on this great 
battlefield. 

When we enlist for this campaign, voices are 
heard protesting. This domain of industry and 
traffic, they tell us, is not within the province of 
Christianity. It is possible that Christianity might 
do something to soften the asperities and sweeten 
the tempers of contending parties in this arena; 
but the law that rules in all this realm is not the 
law of Christ; it is the law of self-interest; if any 
attempt should be made to apply Christian ethics 
to the relation between master and workman, be¬ 
tween seller and buyer, confusion would arise at 
once; the Christian law may be the best law for 
the home and the school and the neighborhood, but 
it will never work in the factory or the market; 
benevolence and generosity and unselfishness are 
good enough in their place, but business is busi¬ 
ness. You know that this is the common senti¬ 
ment of the street and the exchange, but it is more 
than this: it is the doctrine of what has been 
widely known as science; it is the fundamental 
assumption of a reasoned philosophy of economics 
which has been current over a large part of the 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 31 

world for almost a century. No clearer contradic¬ 
tion can be expressed in logical terms than that by 
which certain teachers of political economy have 
denied the validity of Christ’s law, and have 
asserted the exact contrary of that which his law 
affirms. It lies at the basis of the great work of 
Adam Smith upon the “ Wealth of Nations ” that 
self-interest is the one supremely beneficent social 
force ; that when every man seeks his own with all 
his might the whole world will be prosperous and 
happy. The supremacy of self-interest over benev¬ 
olence is everywhere assumed, and the absolute 
sufficiency of this principle, if unobstructed, to pro¬ 
mote human welfare is regarded as too plain for 
argument. The a priori assumption, “ half theo¬ 
logical, half metaphysical,” on which his whole 
argument rests is, as Professor Ingram has stated, 
the notion that when the individual aims only at 
his private gain, he is led by an invisible hand 
to promote the public good. 1 Obviously, then, it 
is the duty of the individual to aim only at his 
private gain; the most unswerving egoism is the 
truest benevolence. Of course, this hostility to 
Christianity was not explicit nor conscious on the 
part of Adam Smith and his school; they were 
humane and devout men; it is not the intent of 
their teaching, it is the logic of their doctrine, that 
I am talking about. This same idea, says Toyn¬ 
bee, though nowhere stated in the writings of 
Ricardo, underlies them all; it is the substratum 
1 Ency. Brit. xix. p. 366. 


32 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


on which they all rest. And the next great name 
of this school of economists, Malthus, puts it into 
language which no man can misunderstand. “ The 
great Author of nature,” he says, “ with that wis¬ 
dom which is apparent in all his works,” has 
made “ the passion of self-love beyond compari¬ 
son stronger than the passion of benevolence.” If 
this is true, then when Christ bids us love our 
neighbors as ourselves, he bids us violate the law 
of our nature as God made it in the beginning. 
“By this wise provision,” Malthus continues 
(that is, by making the passion of self-love beyond 
comparison stronger than the passion of benevo¬ 
lence), “ the most ignorant are led to promote 
the general happiness, an end which they would 
have totally failed to attain if the moving principle 
of their conduct had been benevolence. Benevo¬ 
lence, indeed, as the great and constant source of 
action, would require the most perfect knowledge 
of causes and effects, and therefore can only be the 
attribute of the Deity. In a being so short-sighted 
as man, it would lead into the grossest errors, 
and soon transform the fair and cultivated soil of 
civilized society into a dreary scene of want and 
confusion.” 1 It is true, Malthus goes on to say, 
that benevolence has very important uses in our 
social life: it is “ the kind corrector of the evils 
arising from the other stronger passion ; ” it is 
“ the balm and consolation and grace of human 
life, the source of our noblest efforts in the cause 
1 Essay of Population , edition of 1872, p. 492. 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 33 

of virtue, and of our purest and most refined plea¬ 
sures.” Nevertheless, it is a principle wholly subor¬ 
dinate to self-love, and the Creator meant that it 
should be. In his original uprightness, man was 
supremely egoistic; perhaps the fall took place 
when good-will began to prevail over greed. Mal- 
thus does not mention it, but it is possible that his 
theory may offer us a new interpretation of the 
Adamic allegory. May it not be that the benevo¬ 
lence involved in the act of the woman, when she 
gave of the fruit of the tree to the man instead of 
eating it all herself, was what brought death into 
the world, and all our woes ? It is true that Mal- 
thus wishes to have the duty of benevolence con¬ 
stantly enforced upon men; but how much weight 
such exhortations would have upon his hearers, 
after he had told them that the Creator “ has 
enjoined every man to pursue as his primary object 
his own safety and happiness,” we may easily cal¬ 
culate. If God has purposely made self-love incom¬ 
parably stronger than benevolence in each man’s 
nature, and if the design of this is to promote the 
welfare of all men, it is certainly the bounden duty 
of each to fulfill his Maker’s design concerning 
himself, and to love himself supremely, and take 
little thought for his neighbor. It would be hard 
to realize that this was not a travesty, if we had not 
for three quarters of a century been reaping the 
bitter fruits of this poisonous sowing in the lives 
of millions. The natural man receives doctrine of 
this sort without cavil; it justifies and almost glo- 


34 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


rifles his strongest passion. We cannot wonder 
that the theories of this school obtained wide cur¬ 
rency. 

Malthus was a clergyman. How he adjusted 
his theories to the law of Christ I do not know. 
Where he could have found words by which a more 
flat repudiation of the second great commandment 
of the law could be expressed I cannot tell. No 
infidel since the days of Celsus has more daringly 
disputed the word of the Lord. Malthus was 
neither an evil-minded nor an impious man ; there 
was no intention of blasphemous denial; he was 
simply the victim of a theory. The wonder is that 
he never perceived the fact that his maxims gave 
the lie to that which is most central and funda¬ 
mental in the teachings of his Master. 

Undesigned though it undoubtedly was, the ef¬ 
fect of all these economic reasonings, in which 
the beneficence of an unbridled egoism is asserted 
or assumed, has been for a century insidiously, but 
none the less actively, antagonistic to Christianity, 
an unswerving obstacle to the progress of the 
Christian church, a mighty hindrance to the coming 
of the kingdom of heaven. No deadlier influence 
has been arrayed against the Christian religion; 
more than all the skepticism of rationalists and 
critics of the Scriptures, this doctrine has under¬ 
mined the faith of the church and paralyzed its 
life. For this was a philosophy which everybody 
could understand, and which quickly found its way 
to everybody's lips. It requires no erudition to 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 35 


know what is meant by pursuing our own interest 
exclusively, in all our exchanges of services and 
commodities ; it is the very thing we are most in¬ 
clined to do; and when the great masters of eco¬ 
nomic science tell us that this is the true and only 
way to promote the general welfare, why should we 
not give free rein to our cupidity, and plunge into 
these fierce competitions with all our powers ? 

There is, of course, a basis of truth under the 
speculations of the old economists. It is true that 
God does know how to make the wrath of man and 
the cupidity of man to praise him ; it is true that 
he is able to neutralize the evil effects wrought by 
human selfishness, and that when men pursue their 
own interests exclusively they are often, by the 
very constitution of society, forced to confer bene¬ 
fits upon their fellow-men. But this is a very dif¬ 
ferent doctrine from that of Malthus, which we 
have been considering. The Ruler of the universe 
is so wise and so strong that he overrules human 
perverseness, and brings many blessings to earth, 
even when men disobey his laws and fight against 
him; but this gives us no token of the good that 
might be ours, if men would only obey his laws 
and work together with him. 

The error of the old economists was an over¬ 
strained optimism. Such was not the faith of their 
followers. Optimism soon gave place to fatalism. 
The doctrine taught by later philosophers not a 
few was that these great movements of the eco¬ 
nomic realm were wholly outside the moral order. 


36 


TOOLS AND THE MAN . 


“ All that we can affirm with certainty,” says one 
economist, “ is that social phenomena are subject 
to law, and that natural laws of the social order 
are in their entire character like the laws of phy¬ 
sics.” This is the theory maintained by many 
modern writers. This whole realm, they insist, is 
governed by “ the cold inflexible laws of supply 
and demand.” No power on earth can change the 
results which naturally flow from the action of 
these laws. These teachers do not say with Adam 
Smith and Malthus that these results are always 
beneficent, but they say that no selfish intent of 
ours can make them less beneficent, and no good¬ 
will of ours can make them more beneficent, than 
they naturally are. It is all one, so far as the out¬ 
come is concerned, whether we are supremely self¬ 
ish or disinterestedly benevolent in our conduct of 
business. All is included in a network of inexorable 
law; individual choices cannot alter the results. 
We may wish as employers to consider the interests 
of our workmen, but no kindness of ours will avail 
them anything; the cold inexorable laws of supply 
and demand have fixed their remuneration, and it 
is useless for us to mix sentiment of any sort with 
our business; it can do them no good. 

It is evident that this doctrine is not any more 
friendly to Christian ethics than the one which it 
has superseded. Christian morality assumes that 
the wills of men are free, and that their social con¬ 
ditions are largely dependent on their own choices. 
It regards society as improvable by moral instru- 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 37 


mentalities; it bids us pray that the kingdom of 
God may come, and work for the answering of our 
prayers. The notion that “ natural laws of the 
social order are in their entire character like 
the laws of physics ” is the very antithesis of the 
Christian morality. The effect of this doctrine 
upon the conduct of men must be, of course, to 
discourage obedience to the Christian law through¬ 
out the whole realm of industry and exchange. 

The rapid growth of that unsocial and destruc¬ 
tive mercantilism whose devastations President 
White so vividly described in his little tract en¬ 
titled “ A Century’s Message ” is thus pretty clearly 
explained. The natural love of gain is not wholly 
accountable for it; that master passion of human¬ 
ity has been stimulated and intensified by a bad 
social philosophy. The egoistic impulses are strong 
enough in themselves ; the Christian law recognizes 
them and uses them, counteracting them with the 
altruistic motives; but the prevailing social philo¬ 
sophy has met the Christian morality upon the very 
threshold of the kingdom of exchanges, and has 
ordered it out and barred the door against it, in¬ 
sisting that love has no standing-room within this 
realm, that self-interest is the only motive that can 
rationally rule in industry and trade. 

A natural result of the exclusion of Christian 
ethics from this domain has been the weakening of 
its authority in every other realm. Conduct is 
three fourths of life, we are told; and the conduct 
which has to do, in one way or another, with 


38 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


economic questions is a large fraction of that frac¬ 
tion. In buying and selling, in exchanging com¬ 
modities or services, in working or in directing the 
labor of others, most of the time of most of our 
neighbors is spent. In a highly organized society 
like ours, economic relations are found underlying 
and conditioning almost everything we do. If 
over all this part of our lives the Christian law has 
no control, if industry and business are beyond 
Christ’s jurisdiction, really not much is left to him. 
In the minds of those who believe this, he must 
suffer a serious loss of respect. What sort of a 
King of men is he who is powerless to control the 
largest and intensest part of their activity ? Under 
such limitations, the Christian vocation becomes 
largely a matter of sentiment; what wonder that 
it is handed over to women and children ? We 
shall never win for our Master the allegiance of 
the strong men of this world until we show them 
that he has the power and the purpose to rule the 
shop and the factory and the counting-room as well 
as the church and the home. 

It is evident, then, that the Christian teacher who 
is faithful to his commission will be brought con¬ 
tinually into direct and uncompromising conflict 
with certain prevalent dogmas and influences of 
the old political economy. A good many other 
kinds of infidelity and skepticism he may very well 
afford to ignore ; but the infidelity which plumply 
denies the royal law according to the Scripture, 
“ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” which 



ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS . 39 


insists that this law is null and void in the largest 
domain of human life, is a foe with which there 
must be no parleying. 

It is highly important, however, to take notice 
that the political economists of the present time 
are not our antagonists, but our allies, in this war¬ 
fare. There are conspicuous exceptions, but the 
great majority of the teachers of this science now 
in the field repudiate the theories of which I have 
been speaking, and teach a doctrine in closest har¬ 
mony with the Christian ethics. A great change 
has taken place in economic theories within the 
past twenty-five years. There are few colleges in 
this country, and scarcely any in Germany or in 
England, in which the traditional doctrines are 
now taught. The more recent works upon politi¬ 
cal economy are the arsenal from which we may 
furnish ourselves with the needful weapons of this 
warfare. But the traditional doctrines yet linger 
in the minds of the people; the maxims, senti¬ 
ments, practices, of the average business man show 
how firmly they are rooted in his thought; our 
jurisprudence is badly infected with them ; the 
newspaper constantly reflects them; the working 
classes are up in arms against them, but that is re¬ 
garded as a melancholy sign of the ignorance and 
unreason of the working classes. The employing 
and trading classes learned this philosophy very 
quickly; it will take them longer to unlearn it. 
Time and patience are required to eradicate doc¬ 
trines of this sort from the popular mind. Rag- 


40 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


weed is easily propagated, but not so easily extir¬ 
pated. The individualistic philosophy may be 
only a survival, but some curses survive very per¬ 
sistently. 

In view of the fact that economics and ethics 
are so closely related, it is highly important that 
every Christian who tries to teach should be a 
careful student of this department of social science. 
I think that a portion of the time devoted by 
young theologians to mastering the heresies and 
controversies of the early church might usefully 
be given to the study of these questions which 
touch so nearly the moral life of the people 
with whom they are to deal. It is a great field, 
indeed; a lifetime can be spent upon it; and a 
smattering of knowledge picked up along its bor¬ 
ders may easily render its possessor ridiculous, if 
not dangerous; nevertheless, it is imperative that 
the Christian pastor should exercise himself in the 
elements of this science. “ To no class in the 
country,” says Professor Laughlin, “ does the de¬ 
mand for a knowledge of economic principles, and 
for a practical realization of the means by which 
the masses of men should be touched, appeal with 
more justice and force than to the educated minis¬ 
try of the country .” 1 

It may be useful to make a few practical sug¬ 
gestions as to the principles which should guide 
the Christian teacher in his application of the 
Christian ethics to economic questions. 

1 The Study of Political Economy , p. 100. 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 41 


1. Let the Christian teacher get firm hold of 
the truth that the Christian law is a perfect and a 
universal law; that it applies to every form of so¬ 
cial order; that it forms the only basis on which 
men can usefully and happily associate and cooper¬ 
ate ; that it is just as applicable to industrial or 
commercial society as to domestic or civil society. 
At this point there is a vast amount of uncer¬ 
tainty, if not skepticism, among Christian teach¬ 
ers ; and it is to the hesitation and timidity of 
their utterances respecting the nature of Christ’s 
kingdom, and its paramount rights and claims, 
that a great deal of the present confusion and 
strife in society is due. 

2. But, when they set up this claim, let them 
be careful to understand and not misstate the 
Christian law. It is not sheer altruism, — Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor and not thyself; it is the 
union of self-love with good-will, — Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself. It leaves room for the 
law of self-preservation, for the operation of a 
legitimate self-interest; it puts upon every man 
the responsibility of self-support and the obligation 
of self-respect; but it lifts up to equality with the 
self-regarding motives the motives of benevolence, 
putting the social duties and obligations on a par 
with those which the individual owes to himself. 
Because the man is the child of God, he has no 
right to neglect or despise himself ; because his 
neighbor also is a child of the same Father, he owes 
to him a brother’s love and care. Christianity pre- 


42 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


serves, therefore, in all its force, what the econo¬ 
mists call the individual initiative; it implies, I 
think, individual property. I doubt whether the 
character of which it furnishes the ideal could be 
developed in a purely communistic regime. But 
while it bids the man follow the natural impulse 
which leads him to care for himself, it evokes the 
other principle of benevolence, and gives it equal 
authority, and expects through the equivalence of 
these two forces to secure individual perfection and 
social harmony. 

It is this coordination of egoism and altruism 
which constitutes the very kernel of the Christian 
ethics, and which it has seemed so very difficult for 
the average economist to comprehend. Malthus, 
evidently, could not conceive of any other condition 
of things except that which results from the abso¬ 
lute supremacy of one or the other of these two 
forces. In his scheme of the universe, either ego¬ 
ism or altruism must prevail. If self-love ruled, 
benevolence must be wholly subordinate; if be¬ 
nevolence ruled, self-love could find no room for 
exercise. Since he found self-love greatly in the 
ascendant, he inferred that this must be God’s will; 
he thought that he was interpreting the purpose of 
the Creator. The Socialists, on the other hand, re¬ 
coiling from the evils of excessive self-love, hail be¬ 
nevolence as the reigning principle of society, and 
refuse to give to self-love any considerable place 
in their reconstructed social order. These theories 
are both wrong; the Christian law, which makes 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 43 

neither of these principles supreme, which coordi¬ 
nates and balances them, will be found to furnish 
the only safe basis of social organization. 

Undoubtedly it is a difficult matter to keep 
these forces in equilibrium. Practical morality is 
always a difficult matter. To find the right and 
follow it takes care and patience and strenuous 
endeavor. Selfishness is very simple; so is sen¬ 
timentalism; right conduct sets for us many in¬ 
tricate problems. To refer all human action to 
one motive makes the calculation easy, but it is 
not always correct. The equation of the circle, 
with its single focus, is simpler than that of the 
ellipse with its two foci; but the orbits of the 
heavenly bodies are ellipses, nevertheless, and not 
circles. And when our social philosophers learn to 
calculate the movements of the social order accord¬ 
ing to the Christian law, with relation to these two 
centres of individual and social welfare, their theo¬ 
ries will be much more useful to their fellow-men. 

3. The Christian teacher must also be prepared 
to show, in exact contradiction to the statement of 
Malthus, that the general happiness is not pro¬ 
moted when the passion of self-love is “beyond 
comparison stronger than the passion of benevo¬ 
lence.” It should, not be difficult to‘furnish histor¬ 
ical evidence in disproof of this monstrous asser¬ 
tion. Even if it could be shown that unbridled 
individualism will result in the most rapid produc¬ 
tion of material wealth, that does not quite prove 
that it is the surest path to the “ general happi- 


44 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


ness.” The widespread discontent and social de¬ 
gradation which accompany this sudden increase of 
wealth, and the evils that threaten the overthrow 
of the existing order, must also he taken into the 
account. iBut, furthermore, it may be useful to 
make it plain, by deductive reasoning, as Mr. 
Sidgwick has done in his admirable chapter on 
“ The System of Natural Liberty in Relation to 
Production,” that the free pursuit by individuals 
of their own exclusive interest will not lead to 
universal welfare. By the same deductive process 
which led Bastiat into his miraculous harmonies, 
Mr. Sidgwick, a much finer logician, shows that 
“the scientific ideal of political economists cannot 
legitimately be taken as the practical ideal of the 
Art of Political Economy; since it is shown by 
the same kind of abstract reasoning to be liable to 
fail, in various ways and to an indefinite extent, of 
realizing the most economical and effective organi¬ 
zation of industry.” 1 The confidence of our mod¬ 
ern bourgeoisie in the beneficence of sheer in¬ 
dividualism is so strong that some pains must be 
taken to show them that the theory on which they 
are resting lacks even speculative foundations. 

4. We must be able*, also, to challenge the 
materialistic fatalism that lurks in much of our 
modern sociology. We must have the power to 
see and to show that what men call the social and 
economic laws are not all “ inexorable; ” that they 
are not of the character of physical laws at all; 

1 Principles of Political Economy, Book III. chap. ii. 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 45 


that the intelligence, the conscience, and the will of 
man are constant elements of these social forces; 
that they are modifiable, therefore, by human 
choice and effort. These economic laws, or some 
of them, arise out of human nature. “ But human 
nature,” as Arnold Toynbee has said, “ is not al¬ 
ways the same. It slowly changes, and is modified 
by higher ideals and wider and deeper conceptions 
of justice. Men have forgotten that, though it is 
impossible to change the nature of a stone or a 
rock, human nature is pliable, and pliable above 
all to nobler ideas and to a truer sense of justice. 
We have no reason to suppose that human nature 
as it is now will always remain the same. We 
have reason, on the other hand, to suppose that 
employers, under the influence of the wider and 
deeper conceptions of which I have spoken, may be 
willing to forego, in the struggle for division of 
wealth, some part of that share which would come 
to them if they chose to exert their force without 
restraint. It may be said, ‘This is chimerical; 
human nature will be the same, and always has 
been the same.’ This I deny, and I instance that 
great change of opinion which took place in Eng¬ 
land with regard to slavery. If such a rapid 
change could take place in our moral ideas within 
the last hundred years, do you not think it possible 
that in the course of another hundred years Eng¬ 
lish employers and English laborers may act upon 
higher notions of duty and higher conceptions of 
citizenship than they do now?” 1 

1 The Industrial Revolution , p. 175. 


46 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


But not only may we hope for a steady improve¬ 
ment in human nature; we also know that already, 
in obedience to moral motives, the men of the 
present time are led to change their conduct upon 
economic questions; and that economic results are 
affected, very materially, by moral considerations. 
The presence and the pressure of ethical motives 
do modify the working of economic forces. 

In a late essay, written in a humane and catholic 
temper, I find a rather sturdy protest against the 
intrusion of ethical considerations into the eco¬ 
nomic realm. The two sciences are wholly distinct, 
this essayist insists, and must not be confused. 
“ The question what ought to be, or what we wish, 
must be kept clear from the question what is, if 
we wish for any trustworthy answer to either.” 
“Is there any doubt,” he demands, “that our sym¬ 
pathy with the aspirations of the working classes 
in their centuries of effort, or our zeal for whatever 
shall bring the masses of society into the full light 
and warmth of modern civilization, is and must 
always be altogether foreign to the question as to 
the causes which determine wages?” 1 If the essay¬ 
ist means that the economist’s sympathies will not 
directly affect the causes which determine wages, 
his contention may be admitted. Indirectly, how¬ 
ever, the economist’s sympathy or want of sym¬ 
pathy has a great deal to do with this matter. But 
if he means that the sympathy of the people gen¬ 
erally, and especially of the employing classes, with 
1 Journal of Economics, i. 24. 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 47 

the laborers in their struggles, “is and must always 
be altogether foreign to the question as to the 
causes which determine wages,” then his doctrine 
is by no means indubitable. I should say that 
sympathy with the laborer, and a desire for his 
welfare on the part of his employers and his neigh¬ 
bors generally, are clearly among the causes which 
determine wages, — causes that often operate very 
efficiently, and that ought to be and would be 
much more efficient than they are if economists 
had not so diligently sought to prove that they 
could not operate at all. The presence or the 
absence of this feeling of sympathy and good-will 
toward the laborer affects his fortunes for good or 
ill very materially. It affects wages directly and 
perceptibly. Who does not know that the deter¬ 
mining factor in many strikes is public opinion? 
The question whether the men carry their point or 
not depends very largely on whether they have the 
sympathy of their neighbors. Even so purely 
economic an element as rent is affected consider¬ 
ably by public opinion. Professor Thorold Kogers 
asserts that rents in England have been for long 
periods far below the figure which they would have 
reached under competition. The “disreputable 
publicity” attending evictions has, he says, pre¬ 
vented English landlords from grinding the face 
of their tenants. The evidence which Dr. Walker 
has marshaled in his chapter on “ What may Help 
the Wages Class in its Competition for the Pro¬ 
ducts of Industry” 1 is abundant and convincing. 

1 The Wages Question, p. 345 seq. 


48 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


It is admitted by all economists that whatever 
tends to increase the efficiency of labor tends to 
increase wages by enlarging the product to be di¬ 
vided between capital and labor. But, in the words 
of President Walker, “ the greatest possibilities of 
industrial efficiency lie in the creation of hopeful¬ 
ness, self-respect, and social ambition among the 
laboring class.” 1 These are moral qualities, but 
their economic effects are of the utmost impor¬ 
tance. And the moral qualities which have this 
efficiency, the hopefulness, the self-respect, and the 
social ambition, are surely developed and stimu¬ 
lated in the laboring class by the manifestation to 
them of sympathy and good-will on the part of 
their employers and their neighbors. 

That terrible chapter of President Walker’s on 
“ The Degradation of Labor,” from which I have 
just quoted a sentence, shows how fatal may be the 
consequences of a protracted reduction of wages. 
Those heavenly harmonies of the enthusiastic 
Frenchman, which guarantee to everybody peace 
and plenty, do not operate at all. The loss of vigor, 
of hope, of moral stamina, entails a condition which 
perpetuates and aggravates itself. “ When people 
are down,” says Dr. Walker, “economical forces 
solely are more likely to keep them down, or push 
them lower down, than to raise them up.” 2 

Well, there are a great many people in the 
world who are down in just this way. What is to 

1 The Wages Question , p. 85. 

2 Ibid. p. 87. 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 49 

be done with them ? Their wages are very low, 
and tend to diminish rather than to increase. If 
sympathy and good-will have no place in the solu¬ 
tion of such problems, it will surely go hard with 
these poor people. The fact is that it is only by 
the active intervention of moral agencies that such 
calamities can be prevented, and such injuries 
repaired, and such degraded masses lifted up. 
“ Moral and intellectual causes only,” says Dr. 
Walker, “can repair any portion of the loss and 
waste occasioned.” 

In England, for many years, factory labor suf¬ 
fered such a degradation as has just been described. 
Large masses of laborers sank, under the operation 
of “ purely economic laws,” into a condition from 
which they could never have risen. The sympathy 
and good-will of their neighbors, their rich and 
high-born neighbors, devised the factory legislation 
which rescued them from this degradation. It 
will scarcely be disputed that this factory legisla- 
tion rescued and raised up multitudes of these hap¬ 
less people ; helped them to stand ; enabled them to 
regain the ground they had lost; qualified them to 
earn better wages, and actually put them in posses¬ 
sion of better wages. It would seem, then, that 
considerations of humanity are not necessarily alto¬ 
gether foreign to the question of the causes which 
determine wages.” 

This essayist insists that “ the process adopted 
for the elucidation of scientific law must of logical 
necessity be kept free from ethical considera- 


50 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


tions.” 1 In the name of common sense and 
common humanity, how can this question — the 
wages question — be discussed without reference 
to ethical considerations ? The effects that we 
read off and tabulate as economical are in large 
measure due to moral causes. “ No action,” says 
a recent writer, 44 can be regarded as merely eco¬ 
nomic and as possessing no moral character. If 
I buy a coat, there are many moral questions in¬ 
volved ; and the attendant circumstances in any 
actual instance will render an apparently indifferent 
action right or wrong. It is right to be suitably at¬ 
tired, and wrong to be extravagant; it is right to 
pay your bills punctually, and wrong to run into 
debt; buying a coat may in itself be either right or 
wrong, but in each particular case it must be one 
or the other; it cannot be destitute of all moral 
quality. Just as we cannot distinguish matters of 
general interest from those that are merely private, 
because all the affairs of citizens are indirectly of 
general concern, so we cannot distinguish the moral 
from the merely economic, because all economic 
conduct has moral aspects.” 2 

In another part of the same periodical from 
which I have been quoting is a translation of a re¬ 
cent review by the greatest living German econo¬ 
mist, Adolph Wagner. In this review, Wagner 
mentions five double motives which govern men in 
their economic conduct : (1) one’s own industrial 

1 Quoted by Journal of Economics , p. 26. 

2 Politics and Economics , by W. Cunningham, p. 147. 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 51 

advantage and the fear of want; (2) the fear of 
punishment and the hope of approval; (3) the sense 
of honor and the fear of disgrace: (4) the impulse 
to activity and the fear of the results of inactivity; 

(5) the sense of duty and the fear of conscience. 

And he insists that economic theory, “ so far as 
it operates with psychological motives, makes de¬ 
ductions from them, and tries to explain phenom¬ 
ena that are based on economic activity, must 
begin by considering the possible influence of 
all these motives.” 1 The sense of duty is an 
economic motive, says this great economist. “We 
may be thankful,” he goes on, “ that it can appear, 
and does appear, in industrial actions, repressing 
and modifying other motives. Because of it, com¬ 
petition is not pressed to the utmost, prices do not 
reach the highest or lowest limits which the pursuit * 
of individual advantage would fix. . . . Under this 
head we are to class not only all charitable action, 
but the cases where an industrial or social superior 
purposely refrains from making his own interest 
the exclusive ground of his economic conduct; ” 2 
when he acts like a Christian, that is to say, instead 
of an “ economic man.” 

With such authority as this at our back, we 
may stand without much diffidence in the pres¬ 
ence of the materialistic economists, and utter our 
protest against an economic method which care¬ 
fully rules out all ethical considerations. The 

1 Quoted in Journal of Economics , i. 118, 122. 

2 Ibid. p. 121. 


52 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


trouble with such an alleged science is not only 
that it is immoral, but that it is unscientific. Its 
facts are mutilated in the handling, and its causes 
are not true causes. Its scientific propagandists 
are not, happily, very numerous just now ; but its 
disciples and devotees are a great multitude. To 
convert them from the error of their opinions; to 
make them see that right thought and kind feel¬ 
ing and just action are true and mighty economic 
forces, and that men of good-will have the power 
to make this, in every way, a better world to live 
in, is part of the work of the Christian teacher. 

5. Finally, let us always insist that the increase 
of the national wealth, with which political econ¬ 
omy sometimes supposes itself to be solely con¬ 
cerned, is subordinate to the national welfare, but 
is conditional for it and inseparable from it. It 
would be idle, of course, to give time to the study 
of the methods of increasing the national wealth, 
unless the increase of the national wealth were a 
thing to be desired. That is the postulate which 
underlies the study of economics. But the in¬ 
crease of the national wealth is a thing to be 
desired only so far as it promotes the national 
welfare. It will not do to assume, as many econo¬ 
mists seem to do, that all additions to the wealth 
of the nation are necessarily additions to its wel¬ 
fare. The aggregate of material possessions may 
be increasing while the general well-being is suffer¬ 
ing serious losses. The total wealth of Rome was 
never increasing so rapidly as in the day of the 


ECONOMICS AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 53 

nation’s swiftest decline. To study the problems 
of national wealth, and keep our eyes shut to the 
effect produced by this wealth upon the national 
life, would be highly unprofitable business. The 
attempt to ignore this question would be demor¬ 
alizing. The methods by which this wealth is 
'produced and distributed are acting directly and 
powerfully upon the character of the whole people . 
The only interest that any Christian or any pa¬ 
triot can have in the study of these methods 
centres in these estimates of national character. 
The one question that he is concerned to ask is 
how this wealth and these ways of getting it are 
affecting the health, the vigor, the morals of the 
people. These material gains are means to an 
end, and that end is the life of the nation. It is 
not chiefly by the use of wealth, after it is gained, 
that character is affected ; it is rather in the very 
act of producing and exchanging it that the 
moral life of the individual or the community is 
enriched or impoverished. How, then, can these 
great movements of the industrial realm ever, in 
any sound thinking, be dissociated from the moral 
issues toward which they are tending ? Eco¬ 
nomics without ethics is a mutilated science, — the 
play of Hamlet without Hamlet. It is the work 
of the Christian moralist to bring together and 
hold together firmly, in all his teaching, what God 
has joined together, and what men have so long 
been trying to keep asunder. If those who are 
charged with the duty of enforcing Christian 


54 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


morality are faithful to their high calling, we shall 
see before the end of another generation a much 
sounder and more humane public opinion on eco¬ 
nomic questions taking the place of the conscience¬ 
less theories that have so long prevailed ; we shall 
see the kingdoms of industry and trade submitting 
themselves, as they do not now, to the law of the 
kingdom of heaven; and we shall be conscious 
that a great hindrance to the progress of this king¬ 
dom has been taken out of the way. 


III. 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 

The possession of property is the one object of 
desire most nearly universal in civilized communi¬ 
ties. There is no stronger passion ; it exists in 
different degrees of development in different indi¬ 
viduals and in different communities, but there are 
few who will not confess some personal experience 
of its cravings. “It is not,” says one, “merely 
the love of self and wife and child that intensifies 
the desire for property, but the love of power in 
all its forms; the love of liberty and indepen¬ 
dence ; and very particularly fear, — the fear of the 
uncertain morrow, with all its danger for the prop- 
ertiless. All these and other passions and desires 
combine to strengthen the passion for property to 
an intense extreme, and even boundless degree. 
. . . Our moralist Carlyle vents scornful sarcasm 
on the English people 4 whose hell is want of money 
or failure to make money.’ I venture to affirm, on 
the contrary, that the hell in question, if only the 
poverty or lack of money is sufficiently absolute, 
will be, for most people, a very serious and most 
real hell.” 1 

1 The Social Problem , by William Graham, pp. 333, 335. 


56 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


Since this passion is so nearly universal and so 
intense, it is evident that in our work as Christian 
witnesses we shall constantly encounter it; that it 
will mightily affect for good or ill the characters 
of the men to whom we are sent with the gospel; 
that no small part of our care will be the direction 
or the repression of this omnipresent force. It is of 
the utmost consequence, then, that we understand 
it. The institution of property, its origin in hu¬ 
man nature, its relation to human history, its place 
and function in human society, is a theme that de¬ 
mands our patient study. What is the Christian 
law of property ? On what basis do property 
rights rest in a christianized community? At 
any time such questions as these are of the greatest 
interest to him who seeks to build on the earth 
the kingdom of heaven, but there has been no day 
within the lifetime of any of us when they were 
pressing on the thought of men as they are to-day. 

We are living under a regime of private prop¬ 
erty. The vast wealth that this teeming civiliza¬ 
tion has brought forth is nearly all in the hands 
of individual owners. There are government 
buildings here and there, on land held by the 
state ; there are a few ships and lighthouses, with 
many highways and harbors, all of which are the 
property of the government, common property ; 
there are parks and museums, schools and libra¬ 
ries, and a few colleges, owned by the community; 
but the great mass of all that the land brings 
forth, and the railways and the ships carry, and 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


57 


the factories transform, and the merchants dis¬ 
tribute, is individual property. Combinations of 
individuals, called companies or corporations, hold 
much of this wealth, but this form of ownership 
is only a modification or extension of private 
ownership; the rights of the individual in all 
these combinations are more or less sharply dis¬ 
criminated. 

Of private property there are many kinds, but 
these may be divided into three principal classes: 
(1) lands, including mines; (2) the products of 
human labor; (8) rights of future possession. 
Most of the land in this country is the property 
of individuals ; the same is true of the houses, the 
stores, the factories, the fruits of the earth, the 
products of the mines and the machines, the goods 
and wares of every description. The silver dollar 
in your pocket is the product of labor, and its 
value is due, not wholly, but largely, to the labor 
which it cost to produce it. The bank-bill, how¬ 
ever, which keeps the dollar company, owes its 
principal value, not to the labor expended in pro¬ 
ducing it, but to the fact that it is the sign or evi¬ 
dence of a right which you have acquired to the 
possession of five dollars’ worth of gold or silver 
or goods of any sort for which you may wish to 
exchange it. You may describe it as incorporeal 
property, since it is not the paper of which it is 
composed, but the promise printed on the paper, 
that makes it valuable. Such are all notes, bonds, 
mortgages, stock certificates, patents, copyrights, 


58 


TOOLS AND THE MAN . 


and the like ; they are rights, not things. Much 
of the property of the present day is incorporeal 
property ; it consists of legal rights of this nature. 

In a rude state of society, property of this sort 
does not exist to any extent; it is the creature of 
law ; it is the instrument of a highly complex civili¬ 
zation. Property rights in land and in the things 
that have been produced by labor are also care¬ 
fully defined by law; there is nothing that men 
claim as property that law does not recognize and 
protect. So intimate is the dependence of property 
upon law, in modern civilization, that some philoso¬ 
phers have regarded all property as the creature 
of law. So Bentham : “ Property and law were 
born together, and will die together; before law 
there was no property; take away the law and all 
property ceases.” This is but an echo of Montes¬ 
quieu, who had written : “ As men renounced their 
natural independence to live under political laws, 
they have renounced their natural community of 
possession to live under civil laws. The political 
laws give them liberty, the civil laws property.” 1 
The truth in this is that law is the safeguard and 
bulwark of property, and that property rights would 
be insecure and possessions meagre were it not for 
the protection of the laws. But it is hardly true 
to say that there would be no property but for law. 
If all the laws of the land were abrogated to-mor¬ 
row, the goods in my hands, which I have earned 
by honest labor, would still be my property. I 
1 Lalor’s Cyclopedia , iii. 392. 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


59 


should have the same right to them that I have 
to-day, though I might find it difficult to maintain 
my right. 

The incorporeal property of which I have spoken, 
bank-notes, bonds, stocks, and the like, is of value 
because it is exchangeable for commodities. The 
bank-note gives me a right to a specified amount 
of gold or silver coin; and the gold or silver coin 
is the common representative of exchangeable com¬ 
modities. But these material commodities which I 
may wish to procure, all of them come forth from 
the earth. No man could produce them and possess 
them unless he had somehow acquired a right to 
appropriate the fruits of the earth. 

You go out in the morning, with your basket on 
your arm and a dollar in your pocket, to the city 
market. This dollar of yours, where did you get 
it ? Let us suppose that you earned it by a half¬ 
day’s labor, sawing wood or plowing corn. You 
gave for it a fair equivalent of service. If the man 
who gave you the dollar got it rightfully, then you 
have a perfect right to it. We will not try to trace 
the origin of the dollar now; we assume that your 
right to it is perfect. You find a marketman with 
a load of potatoes, and proceed to exchange a part 
of your dollar for a portion of his load. But where 
did this marketman get these potatoes? If he 
stole them, he has, of course, no right to them, and 
cannot, by exchange for your money, make you their 
rightful possessor. “ But he did not steal them,” 
you say. “ He raised them in his own garden. 


60 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


They are the product of his labor.” Yes, of his 
labor, and of the soil in which they grew. His 
labor was one factor of the product, the land was 
another. Let us admit that he is entitled to so 
much of the value of the product as is due to his 
own labor; but where did he get the right to appro¬ 
priate the powers of the soil, and to make you pay 
him for their contribution ? Now, we shall find 
upon analysis that as all the commodities we value 
come from the earth, the rights of property in them 
involve the right of access to the materials fur¬ 
nished by the earth and of labor upon them. All 
property in things depends on the right to use the 
earth. In a regime of private property, the foun¬ 
dation of property rights is private property in 
land. This may not be necessarily true, but it is 
historically true. Private property in the products 
of labor might, no doubt, coexist with common 
property in land; but, in the existing order, all our 
rights of possession are conditioned upon the pos¬ 
session of the earth. The farmer, the planter, the 
miner, the quarryman, the lumberman, go directly 
to the land for their goods ; the mechanic and the 
manufacturer reshape and transform the products 
of the land ; the merchant exchanges, and the com¬ 
mon carrier transports, the commodities thus pro¬ 
duced ; the artisan or the laborer, the artist or the 
author or the parson, cannot work unless he can 
buy or hire a spot on the earth’s surface to stand 
upon while he labors. The need of land and of 
its products is the fundamental need of human 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


61 


beings ; the right of access to the land, of a share 
in its bounty, of a standing-place upon it, must, 
then, be among our fundamental rights. It is no 
more true that the land is the foundation of all 
our edifices than that a right to the land is the 
foundation of all our property rights. Neverthe¬ 
less, we do not find all men in possession of this 
right. In Great Britain, only about one person in 
thirty-five owns any land; not one in a hundred 
owns any cultivated land. In this country, the 
number of landed proprietors, though much larger 
in proportion, is still much less than the total pop¬ 
ulation, and much less even than the number of 
families. The greater part of the people in this 
country are, and will always be, landless. 

How, then, did those who are now in possession 
of the land acquire their title to it ? If you have 
a house-lot or a farm to which you can show a 
clear claim, you obtained it, perhaps, by purchase; 
the man of whom you purchased it transferred to 
you his title; the man of whom he purchased it 
transferred the title to him : thus, by a series of 
fair contracts and legal transfers, the land has come 
down to you from the first proprietor. Your title 
is therefore as good as that of the first proprietor. 
But how did this first proprietor acquire his right ? 

I will not weary you with any extended criticism 
of the various theories of property which the jurists 
and philosophers have propounded; I will merely 
refer to them. The theory of Savigny and Black- 
stone makes occupancy, matured by prescription, 


62 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


the foundation of property rights. According to 
this theory, he who takes the land, and holds it for 
a certain number of years, has the right to it. 
This founds the right on force, which may answer 
the purposes of law, but is an ethical solecism. 
You can no more get right out of force than you 
can gather grapes from a bramble bush. 

Locke counted the land as originally valueless, 
and made its value consist in the results of the 
labor expended upon it. The man who first culti¬ 
vated it gained a right to it by his labor. It is very 
far from being true, however, that land has no 
value until labor is expended upon it; and while 
the first cultivator might be entitled to the fruits 
of his labor, and to any improvement in the land 
resulting from his labor, it is hard to understand 
how the fact of his working on the land gives him 
a perpetual and exclusive title to the land itself. 

Another theory makes property simply the ex¬ 
tension and completion of the rights of life and 
liberty. If a man has a right to live, he has a right 
to seek and to own that by which life is supported. 
He has, therefore, a right to occupy the earth and 
to cultivate it; he has a right to a dwelling-place 
upon the planet, and to such portions of the earth’s 
bounty as he may be able to take for himself with¬ 
out interfering with the rights of others. All this 
may be admitted; nevertheless, it does not clearly 
appear what right a man could thus acquire to the 
exclusive and permanent possession of any portion 
of the earth’s surface. This theory would seem to 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


63 


justify common property in land, rather than pri¬ 
vate property. 

This fact of common property is, indeed, the fact 
which confronts us whenever we extend our studies 
into the primitive forms of social life. The philo¬ 
sophers have generally started with the assumption 
of a lone individual, landing on an island or dis¬ 
covering a continent, and have proceeded to de¬ 
rive their theories of property from his relations 
to the land and to the people who came after him. 
They have taken it for granted that the individual¬ 
istic regime was the earliest form of social organi¬ 
zation, — a society composed of individuals, each 
possessing definite and exclusive property rights. 
But the historical fact is, that the present system 
of individual property was preceded by a commu¬ 
nistic system. 

“ So far as history speaks with any confidence 
on the matter,” says Professor Graham, “ she shows 
us man at first, but still late in his career, in a 
community, with goods in common. The group or 
clan is assumed to have a common origin or ances¬ 
try, and the community of blood has carried with 
it community of property. There is no such thing 
as individual property, and the conception, 4 This 
is mine,’ would scarcely rise in the minds of any 
members, save, perhaps, in a vague way in the 
mind of the chief or head, who, we find, is some¬ 
times spoken of in the records as the owner of all 
the property of the family, and if not also of all 
the persons composing it, at least of the slaves, 


64 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


that invariable adjunct of early patriarchal com¬ 
munities. But this is but a mode of speech, the 
ideas connoted by which differed even very consid¬ 
erably from those which we would attach to them. 
The reality was that property belonged to all, and 
only such portions of it as food became the mo¬ 
mentary property of individuals, for their use, but 
not for their appropriation or accumulation. Even 
their food was not property, in one sense. It was 
apportioned out under the direction of the head, 
who was merely the administrator. It was not his 
to give or to keep, and it only became the property 
of the recipient in a very narrow sense. It was 
his only if he used it, and only to the extent of his 
use ; otherwise, it reverted to the common stock 
and store, and so was not individual property, in 
one sense. Nor was it much otherwise as regarded 
clothes and personal ornaments and arms. These 
were not at first conceived as the property of the 
wearers, but rather as something belonging to all 
and lent out to the individuals, which reverted to 
the community at their death.” 1 

The political science deduced by Rousseau and 
his tribe from their own consciousness, in which 
the noble savage is represented as roaming alone 
through the woods, and finally settling on some 
spot of the earth’s surface, and there developing 
himself into a first-class political integer, with all 
his rights and powers and perquisites and proper¬ 
ties about him, — thus armed and equipped, en- 
1 The Social Problem , pp. 292-3. 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


65 


tering into contract with certain other equally 
endowed political integers to form a political asso¬ 
ciation, in which each one agrees to surrender or 
hold in abeyance a certain portion of his individ¬ 
ual rights, — is purely imaginary. “ Rousseau,” as 
one has said, “ invented the 4 social contract,’ to 
which the objection exists that it was invented by 
Rousseau, and never entered into by man.” 1 The 
historical studies of scholars like Maine, McLen¬ 
nan, Seebohm, and Laveleye prove to us that man, 
so far as we know him, is a gregarious animal, and 
that his earliest appearance in history is not as 
a solitary, but as the member of a community in 
which the property is held in common, and the 
welfare of each is the interest of all. 

Nevertheless, in those early times, we find forces 
at work to break up this communal life, and to in¬ 
troduce the regime of private property. Just how 
this was done we may never very accurately know ; 
the processes of development in these primitive 
societies are sometimes hard to trace. Howbeit, 
it seems evident that this change of tenure was 
the result of collisions between tribes, making a 
military organization necessary, and thus exalting 
the head of the tribe or clan to a kind of suprem¬ 
acy that he would not have gained in the pursuits 
of peace. That there is a tendency in the primi¬ 
tive commune toward private property is true ; 
and that the common estate would almost certainly 
have been broken up into individual portions by 
1 New Social Teachings, p. 175. 


66 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


the operation of other forces, if the clan had had 
no battles to fight, is altogether probable. But, 
as a matter of fact, this change seems to have 
come about as the result of those intertribal wars 
which were so frequent and so fierce in the early 
days. The admirable article on 44 Land ” in the 
44 Encyclopaedia Britannica, unsigned,” but bearing 
some internal marks of the handiwork of Sir Henry 
Maine, thus traces the course of this development 
in ancient Germany : — 

44 The natural increase of population, combined 
with the pressure put upon the Germanic tribes 
from the East by the Slavs, made their territories 
too small for their ambition, if not for their mainte¬ 
nance, and five or six succeeding centuries were 
marked in the history of Europe chiefly by succes¬ 
sive Germanic conquest and occupation of western 
and southern territory. The enormous increase of 
power and possession made it impossible for the 
original tribal government to survive; the great 
generals developed into kings and emperors, and 
their lieutenants (more or less independent accord¬ 
ing to individual capacity and distance from the 
capital) became dukes and counts. Gradually mili¬ 
tary authority, embracing the old idea of the land 
being the property of the state, evolved the new no¬ 
tion of feudalism. The sovereign represented the 
state: to him, in that capacity, land conquered from 
the enemy or forfeited in unsuccessful rebellion 
became subject; and he granted it to his follow¬ 
ers on condition of faithful service in war. They 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


67 


promised to be his men, and from their own tenants 
they exacted in turn the like promise on the like 
conditions. The general insecurity made even free 
owners willing to buy the support of the sovereign 
on similar terms. Thus by degrees, less by deri¬ 
vation from the idea of Roman law, to which it is 
sometimes attributed, than by the mere necessity 
of the times, and as a consequence of the incessant 
state of warfare in which mankind existed, there 
came to be established the feudal doctrine that all 
land was held by the sovereign (on condition of 
suit and service), and that each immediate tenant 
of the sovereign was entitled to sub-infeudate his 
possession on the same principles. Gradually, the 
further attributes of property were added; ser¬ 
vice in war was commuted into rents and the 
peaceful service of tilling the lord’s reserved do¬ 
main. The right of hereditary succession became 
grafted on the personal grant; the power of sale 
and devise followed. Local usages still had influ¬ 
ence ; but it may be said broadly that from about 
the tenth century private property, subject to 
feudal conditions, became the principle of the 
tenure of land in Europe.” 1 

This seems to be the way in which private prop¬ 
erty in land came to exist. War made the chief 
the supreme dictator, the king or the emperor. 
With the sovereignty went the domain. The land 
was the state’s; the king became the state ; then 
the land was the king’s. He parceled it out among 
1 Vol. xiv. p. 262. 


68 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


his retainers, on condition of military service, and 
they among theirs on like conditions. Gradually, 
military service was exchanged for rent, and the 
tenant’s right became hereditary and transferable. 
Thus the land, which originally was the common 
property of the whole community, became the prop¬ 
erty of certain individuals, a small minority of the 
community. For these feudal proprietors, great 
and small, were few in comparison to the whole 
community. The serfs and the slaves, who tilled 
the lands, but had no property in them, constituted 
the great mass of the people. 

When the era of discovery began, the new lands 
were claimed for his monarch by every loyal dis¬ 
coverer. The soil of North America was thus the 
subject of dispute among the European sovereigns. 
Henry VIII. supposed himself to be the proprietor 
of a large share of this continent; the title had 
been won for him by the brave sailors of the realm. 
His claim was not, of course, conceded by the 
Spanish monarchs. When John Cabot and his 
son set sail in search of the western world, they 
bore a patent from the seventh Henry, “ empower¬ 
ing them to seek out, subdue, and occupy, at their 
own charges, any regions which before had ‘ been 
unknown to all Christians.’ They were authorized 
to set up the royal banner and possess the terri¬ 
tories discovered by them as the king’s vassals.” 1 
The feudal principle was thus distinctly asserted in 
all the occupation by Europeans of American soil. 

1 Art. “Cabot,” Ency. Brit. iv. 622. 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


69 


Our fathers took the soil of New England and of 
Virginia on these terms. A patent from the king 
gave them all the rights they had. He had gained 
it by discovery, and held it as lord paramount; they 
held under him. 

Such, then, is the historical origin of private 
property in land. Yet, doubtless, from the begin¬ 
ning, the individualistic regime was pretty sure 
to come. The communistic society lacked the ele¬ 
ments of vigor and enterprise; it could not work 
out the problems before the race; it could not 
achieve the progress in the material arts for which 
humanity was destined; it must have made way at 
some time, under some sort of pressure, for the in¬ 
stitution of private property, even if war had not 
created the feudal hierarchy. Human nature be¬ 
ing what it was in those early times, the land would 
be more diligently cultivated and would bring forth 
larger harvests if it were tilled by those who had a 
permanent interest in its cultivation and improve¬ 
ment. The man who was allowed to have a piece 
of land to himself, subject only to necessary charges 
for the public good, and to keep for himself and 
his family what he could raise upon it, or to ex¬ 
change his products for the products of his neigh¬ 
bors, would work harder and produce more than 
the man who toiled only to replenish the stores of 
the commune, and obtained nothing out of those 
stores but a bare livelihood. The idle and the 
thriftless would, indeed, be better off under the 
commune; but the industrious and the enterpris- 


70 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


ing would be worse off. The industrious and the 
enterprising would discover that fact, at length, and 
would demand a reorganization of society, under 
which their industry and enterprise might reap 
their natural reward. And these classes are apt 
to have things their own way; it is not the idle 
and the thriftless that history consults when she 
shapes the great movements of the social order. 

Nevertheless, if this change had been made from 
common property to private property by peaceful 
instead of warlike methods, it could only have 
been made rightfully on the ground of the public 
welfare. The community would never have yielded 
its possession of the land to individuals if it had 
not believed that it — the community — would be 
the gainer by the change. It could never have 
meant to surrender its paramount right to the 
land; it would have allowed this distribution among 
individuals only tentatively, and with many quali¬ 
fications. “ For certain purposes, and under certain 
restrictions,” it must have said to those who re¬ 
ceived these titles, “ you may retain possession of 
this land, and may convey your right in it by sale 
or bequest; but the community still retains the 
supreme right to the domain which it occupies, 
and it will resume its control over this domain, or 
any portion of it, whenever the public welfare shall 
require it. It allows these individual possessions 
for the promotion of the good of all; whenever it 
becomes evident that the good of all is not pro¬ 
moted by individual property in land, that institu- 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


71 


tion will be abolished, and the land will again be 
common property.” 

The notion, then, that property in land is some¬ 
thing peculiarly sacred and indefeasible, that it is 
a right which the state cannot touch, that every 
interference with landed property is spoliation and 
piracy, has no basis in history or reason. Few 
modern jurists would give this notion any counte¬ 
nance. That writer in the “ Encyclopaedia Britan- 
nica ” from whom I have before quoted declares 
that those who hold this extreme view “ show en¬ 
tire ignorance of the history of land tenure at all 
times.” “Nor is there any theory of the basis of 
property,” he continues, “which does not tacitly 
admit that it is subject to the authority of the 
community. If derived from occupation, it owes 
its title to the agreement of the community to sup¬ 
port that title. If derived from labor, it is valid 
only for the life of the laborer, and whoever suc¬ 
ceeds to him must take it, not as a gift from a 
dead man, whose rights end with the grave, but as 
a gift from the state, which deems that there is 
advantage in encouraging labor by the certainty of 
transmitting its produce. In every view it must 
be admitted that the state, by whose regulations 
and force property is maintained, must have an 
unqualified right to prescribe the conditions under 
which it will confer its gifts on private individ¬ 
uals.” 1 

I have traced with some care the historical origin 
1 Vol. siv. p. 266, 


72 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


of private property in land in order to show that 
that extremely individualistic view which has col¬ 
ored much of our political philosophy is not at all 
tenable. Those replies to Mr. Henry George which 
consist of hysterical outcries of amazement that any 
one could dare to touch, in the name of the state, 
a vested interest so sacred as that of the freeholder 
are quite beside the mark. The soundest jurispru¬ 
dence makes the right of the state superior to the 
right of any private proprietor. The land is held 
by the state for the benefit of the whole people, 
and the right of private proprietors cannot be 
allowed to override or obstruct the rights of the 
whole people. The moment it can be made to 
appear that the welfare of the whole people would 
be promoted by the resumption of the control of 
the land by the state, that moment the abolition of 
private property in land will be a political neces¬ 
sity. Compensation to individual owners would, 
of course, be equitable and imperative; but no 
supposed sacredness of individual tenure could di¬ 
vest the people of any nation of their supreme 
right to the national domain. President Walker 
has disputed Mr. Henry George quite as stoutly as 
any one; yet he says that the system of private 
property in land “ sacrifices, at the very beginning, 
the equities of the subject-matter.” 1 It is not on 
the ground of equity, but solely as a matter of 
political and economic expediency, he declares, that 
private property in land has been permitted. 

1 “ Socialism,” Scribner's Magazine , i. 118. 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


73 


It is quite worth while to go on to the bottom of 
these questions of property rights, because they are 
questions that may, very likely, be hotly discussed 
during the next twenty-five years, and the Christian 
moralist will need to have clear ideas concerning 
them. And he will be greatly interested in know¬ 
ing that the conclusion reached by the historical 
philosophers and jurists, although it is quite in 
conflict with the current individualism, is in per¬ 
fect harmony with the Christian doctrine of 
property. When he intelligently sets forth the 
teachings of the Bible respecting property rights, 
he will find himself declaring a doctrine to which 
Maine and Bluntschli and Laveleye give their 
heartiest assent. What, then, for substance, is the 
Christian doctrine of property in land? 

The Christian doctrine of property in land de¬ 
pends upon the Christian doctrine of the Nation. 
That doctrine, which has been stated with so much 
power by Dr. Mulford, is briefly this: that the 
Nation is a body of men inhabiting, continuously, 
a certain territory, held together by certain historic 
relationships and sympathies, having a common 
spirit and purpose, organized for moral ends, and 
holding its charter from God himself. “ The sov¬ 
ereignty of the Nation,” says Mulford, “ is from 
God and of the people.” 1 “ The people, holding 

their authority from God,” says Brownson, “ hold 
it not as an inherent right, but as a trust from 
him, and are accountable to him for it. It is not 
1 The Nation , p. 53. 


74 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


their own.” 1 To the Nation thus constituted a 
domain is given. If God gives the Nation a right 
to live, he must give it a place to live. The earth 
is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; he is the 
only absolute proprietor; but he intrusts to the 
Nation, for its use, the soil on which it lives, and 
holds the Nation responsible for the right use of 
it. “ The right to the land is in the people,” says 
Dr. Mulford, “ and the land is given to the people 
in the fulfillment of a moral order on the earth. 
. . . The land in its integral unity is thus a divine 
gift, a habitation of the people for all generations. 
It shares in the sacredness of the life of the Na¬ 
tion ; historical associations grow up around it, and 
blended with their traditions it passes sacredly 
from the fathers to the children, and constitutes in 
its wide domain the heritage and the homestead of 
the people.” 2 

The Nation, thus ordained by God, and intrusted 
by him with a portion of the earth’s surface as its 
domain and treasure-house, exists in the earth for 
the fulfillment of the divine purpose, for the estab¬ 
lishment here of righteousness and peace, for the 
maintenance of freedom and order, for the build¬ 
ing up of the kingdom of heaven. The end which 
it must seek is not the welfare of certain favored 
classes, but the welfare of all, — the physical, in¬ 
tellectual, and moral welfare of the whole people. 
In the distribution of its land among its citizens, 

1 The American Republic , p. 127. 

2 The Nation, pp. 65-71. 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


75 


this is the principle by which it must always be 
guided. “As the land is the possession of the 
people,” says Dr. Mulford, “ it cannot be held as 
the patrimony of a prince or the monopoly of a 
class. The land belongs to the people constituted 
as a Nation; and the right to it is in its moral 
order. The exclusive possession and entail of the 
whole domain by a few may prevent and subvert 
the moral order, as it destroys; for instance, the 
life of the family. In England there are those 
which are called great families, but as its homes 
are swept away the family life of the whole people 
is destroyed.” 1 Against such a distribution of 
the national domain as that which now exists in 
England Christian morality protests: that nation 
has not been administering its trust in the interest 
of the whole people ; the monopoly of land which it 
has permitted is unjust and oppressive; it cannot 
rightfully suffer hundreds of thousands of acres 
to be shut up in parks and pleasure grounds and 
game preserves, while millions of its poor are hun¬ 
gry and homeless. 

There is some reason to fear that we of the 
United States are no longer entitled, on this score, 
to throw stones at England. The manner in 
which we have permitted our own national domain 
to be alienated and monopolized indicates that the 
people of this country have not been awake to their 
highest responsibilities. At least one hundred and 
twenty-five millions of acres of the most fertile 
1 The Nation , p. 6. 


76 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


lands of the country have been made over to vari¬ 
ous great railroad corporations. These vast tracts, 
equal to four or five States of the size of Ohio, in 
extent more than twice the whole of New England, 
enough to make forty Connecticuts, have been 
committed, without reserve, to these companies ; 
and all this land may be, and much of it has been, 
sold in enormous quantities to speculators and 
monopolists. A landed aristocracy is thus rapidly 
growing in all the West. I find, in a recent vol¬ 
ume, the statement that more than twenty million 
acres of our domain—about eight Connecticuts — 
are owned by foreign capitalists, in areas of not 
less than fifty thousand acres each. Thus the 
English Duke of Sutherland owns 420,000 acres 
of our soil; the Marquis of Tweeddale, 1,750,000 
acres; Sir Edward Reid & Co., two millions of acres 
in Florida; a Scotch company, made up largely of 
the nobility, have half a million acres in the same 
State ; a similar English company, three millions 
of acres in Texas. 1 To what complexion this will 
come anybody can see. We shall have a great 
number of absentee landlords holding and leasing 
or cultivating by agents a large part of our do¬ 
main. This is an iniquity far worse than the land 
monopoly of Great Britain. The American people 
are verily guilty in that they have suffered such 
a power for oppression to take root in their soil. 
Doubtless they meant well enough, so far as they 
had any intent at all in the matter; their great 
1 Labor , Land , and Law, by W. A. Phillips, p. 357. 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


77 


haste to build railroads and develop the country 
was the motive ; but they have been culpably reck¬ 
less in the disposal of their domain, and they have 
sown their land with dragon’s teeth that may 
bring forth erelong an ugly harvest. Now that 
nearly all the arable land of the country is gone 
out of the control of the Nation into the hands of 
speculators and monopolists, we begin to see how 
blameworthy our negligence has been. No such 
state of things would now exist if the Christian law 
of the responsibility of the Nation for the use of 
the domain had been enforced, and the conscience 
of the people had been awakened to the magnitude 
of this trust. If the American people had been 
made to feel the solemnity of the obligation resting 
on them to make the right use of this vast estate 
intrusted to them by the Creator, as the Hebrews 
were made to feel their responsibility for the just 
distribution of the land of their little country 
among their people, we should have escaped some 
dangers that now sorely threaten us. 

We may approach the Christian doctrine of 
property in land from the point of view of the in¬ 
dividual as well as from that of the Nation. 

The right to life is ranked in all systems of 
Christian ethics as the first of the rights of man. 
But if I have a right to live, I must also have the 
right to acquire and possess that which is necessary 
to support life. To say that one has a right to 
life, but no right to property, is a flat contradiction. 
The right to live involves the right to procure the 


78 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


food by which life is preserved, and this involves 
some rights in the soil out of which the food all 
comes. The state, whose business it is to protect 
my rights, must see to it that this right is not lost. 
It cannot, then, permit any such exclusive owner¬ 
ship of the soil by some as shall debar others from 
obtaining sustenance. When the soil is parceled 
out under a system of private ownership, and there 
are large numbers who are not owners of land, the 
right of these landless millions to life is higher 
and more sacred than the right of the landholders 
to their property. 

Furthermore, my right to live obviously involves 
the right of standing-room on this planet. Yet if 
I am not the owner of any real estate, and if the 
doctrine of the exclusive private ownership of the 
soil is true, I have no such right. I am not per¬ 
mitted to squat in the highway ; the police com¬ 
pel me to move on. Nowhere else have I any 
right. I may be able to secure of a neighbor the 
privilege of dwelling for a limited time on land 
that belongs to him ; but he may refuse, and all 
my neighbors who own land may refuse, to rent 
me a spot to live upon. I live in this world, then, 
by the favor of those who own the land. I have 
no rights here. The same is' true of the millions 
of the landless. They are all here by sufferance. 
If it should please the landowners to combine and 
order the rest of mankind into the lakes and the 
sea, we should be forced, by this doctrine, to go. 

These logical consequences of the individualistic 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


79 


theory show that it is not tenable. It is not by 
sufferance of the landowners that the rest of man¬ 
kind are on this planet: all of us have rights here ; 
standing-room is ours by right; a chance to earn 
our living here is ours by right; and the state 
must permit none of its citizens in any wise to 
abridge or obstruct these rights. No man’s right of 
'private property in land can he so sacred as every 
man’s right to standing-room on the face of the 
earth . And in all its laws of property and its 
theories of land tenure, the state is bound to keep 
the just proportion between the more sacred and 
the less sacred rights. 

The Christian must hold the land, then, by a 
very different tenure from that hard-and-fast in¬ 
dividualism which has been prescribed by recent 
political science. He recognizes the fact that the 
land is the bounty of the Creator, committed to 
the Nation in trust for the people; and that it 
must be distributed and administered by the Na¬ 
tion, acting in God’s stead, for the benefit of the 
whole people. In his own occupation of the land 
he will endeavor to follow this principle. He will 
allow himself no use of the land, and no disuse of 
it, that conflicts with the public good ; and he will 
seek to have the national administration of the do¬ 
main directed always toward the public good. 

Does this mean Communism ? Not at all. It 
does mean some sharp restrictions upon the monop¬ 
oly of land, upon the holding of land for specu¬ 
lative purposes, upon the conduct of those who 


80 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


seek to turn the bounty of nature into a means of 
oppression. It means the assertion of the power 
of the Nation over the land; the recognition of the 
duty of the Nation to see that the land is ad¬ 
ministered for the public good ; the prompt inter¬ 
ference by the Nation with any misuse of it that 
militates against the public good. Very possibly 
the people may make mistakes in their attempts to 
regulate this matter ; democracies are not infalli¬ 
ble ; but democracies must not, therefore, shirk 
their responsibilities. “ Sustained,” says Cairnes, 
“ by some of the greatest names, — I may say by 
every name of the first rank in political economy, 
from Turgot and Adam Smith to Mill, — I hold 
that the land of a country presents conditions 
which separate it economically from the great 
mass of the other objects of wealth; conditions 
which, if they do not absolutely and under all cir¬ 
cumstances impose upon the state the obligation 
of controlling private enterprise in dealing with 
land, at least explain why this control is in certain 
stages of social progress indispensable, and why, 
in fact, it has been constantly put in force when¬ 
ever public opinion or custom has not been strong 
enough to do without it.” 1 

It may not be necessary for* the Christian teacher 
to discuss the methods by which the state shall ad¬ 
minister this trust; but it may be wise, when the 
debate grows hot, for him to bring the broad equi¬ 
ties and the clear obligations of the matter before 
1 Quoted by Walker, Scribner's Magazine, i. 118. 



PROPERTY IN LAND. 


81 


the minds of the people. The principle that the 
land is the property of the whole people, and is to 
he administered for their benefit, is indubitable; 
the question what method of administration will 
best secure the good of the whole people is a prac¬ 
tical question of great difficulty. Dr. Walker says 
that, notwithstanding the admitted fact that the 
system of private property sacrifices in its very 
beginning the equities of the subject-matter, the 
advantages attending it are “ so manifest, so vast, 
and so conspicuous ” that there seems little proba¬ 
bility that it will be superseded by state owner¬ 
ship. We have plenty of evidence from past ages 
that communal ownership did not practically se¬ 
cure the welfare of the people ; we have evidence 
enough before our eyes that individualism brings 
forth gigantic evils. Almost certainly it will be 
found necessary, in the present state of society, to 
combine private ownership with some measure of 
public control, so that the gains of enterprise may 
not be lost, and the mischiefs of monopoly may be 
averted. 

John Stuart Mill had a plan of appropriating 
for the state “ the unearned increment of land.” 
The abstract justice of this proposition is not dis¬ 
puted. It is manifestly unfair that a speculator 
should seize upon a tract of land in the neighbor¬ 
hood of a growing community, and simply sit on 
it and hold it down, — never expending a dollar in 
improving it, — and then, when the value has in¬ 
creased tenfold, or perhaps a hundredfold, by the 


82 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


growth of the community, enrich himself by the 
sale of it. The multiplied value of this land is 
due to nothing that he has done; it is due to the 
industry and enterprise of the people of the com¬ 
munity. The gain rightfully belongs to them, 
and not to him. The only question is, whether 
it is practicable, by some system of taxation, to 
appropriate this unearned increment for the com¬ 
munity. It might be found that the effort to se¬ 
cure this advantage would be burdensome rather 
than beneficial to the community. And there is 
another side to this question which the land re¬ 
formers do not always so clearly see. There is an 
unearned increment; there is also an uncompen¬ 
sated decrement. Land in cities and towns is 
often sold at prices which cannot be maintained, 
and in the shrinkage of land values purchasers 
are compelled to contribute out of their hard earn¬ 
ings a great deal of money for the benefit of the 
mechanics and traders in such communities. Let 
us suppose the case of a man who buys for ten 
thousand dollars a home in some very enterprising 
city. At the time of his purchase real estate hap¬ 
pens to be at the top of the wave; soon it begins 
to depreciate ; in a few years, on his removal from 
the city, he is compelled to sell his home for six 
thousand dollars. Four thousand dollars of the 
money that he has earned by hard work is left be¬ 
hind in that community. Who has got it? It 
may have gone originally into the hands of real 
estate dealers; but it was distributed by them to 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


83 


carpenters, masons, painters, plumbers, and other 
mechanics; it tended to increase the demand for 
labor, and to raise the price of labor in that com¬ 
munity ; grocers and butchers and dry-goods mer¬ 
chants in the neighborhood got their share of it; 
it helped to make business brisk and the city pros¬ 
perous. In the rise of real estate values the hold¬ 
ers of real estate profit by the enterprise of the 
community, but in the shrinkage of real estate 
values the business of the community lays heavy 
tribute upon the savings of the holders of real 
estate. And there is a great deal more of this un¬ 
compensated decrement, the country through, than 
we are apt to take account of. If, now, it is just 
to take away from proprietors the unearned in¬ 
crement, why is it not also just to restore to them 
the uncompensated decrement ? It is evident that 
this would introduce some serious practical com¬ 
plications. Of course it is true that in a growing 
country the increment exceeds the decrement; but 
when the other side is taken into consideration, 
the injustice of the present system appears much 
less flagrant. 

It is much more likely that some modification of 
the laws of bequest and inheritance of land may 
be attempted. But that, too, is a practical matter 
to be settled with a view to the public good. 

Difficult questions, all these, no doubt. The 
administration of government is a difficult business. 
That is not an excuse for neglecting it; it is a rea¬ 
son why the people, whose business it is, should 


84 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


give their best thought to it, and should choose 
their wisest men to attend to it. 

We saw, a little while ago, that the earliest ap¬ 
pearance of men in history was in communal rela¬ 
tions. But we are not certain that we discover 
here the earliest form of property. This might 
have been a secondary stage of human develop¬ 
ment ; it might have been preceded by an individ¬ 
ualistic regime. Some animals are communists, and 
some are not: sheep incline to the communal order ; 
the dog, with his bone, as Mr. Spencer says, is some¬ 
thing of an individualist. The troglodytes of pre¬ 
historic times may have been much more like the 
dog with his bone than like the buffalo in his herd. 
The formation of the commune may have been the 
first social revolution. But if so, it was one of those 
revolutions that do not go backward. It was in 
the direct line of the development of the race; it 
was a step toward the realization of the divine pur¬ 
pose. When, after ages of this communal life, the 
institution of private property supplanted it, that 
in its turn was a movement forward. Men had 
gained by their communal life certain social quali¬ 
ties ; they needed a training in self-reliance and 
enterprise; above all, they needed a development 
of family life, which they could not receive under 
communism. Great have been the benefits, un¬ 
speakable the gains wrought out for mankind under 
this individualistic regime. But the injuries and 
losses, too, have been terrible, and we are beginning 
to recoil from these with a reasonable fear. The 


PROPERTY IN LAND. 


85 


indications are that the pendulum is swinging hack 
toward a system of common property in land. 
Sober thinkers on both continents are discussing 
this possibility with patience and candor. It is 
not at all improbable that some of us may live to 
see the land of England become the property of 
the nation. I doubt whether any of us will live 
long enough to see this take place in America. 
The practical evils of private ownership in this 
country have been so few, and its obvious benefits 
so many, that we are not, I think, very nearly 
ready for Mr. George’s revolution. Yet it may 
come, by and by. The equities and the expedien¬ 
cies are often far apart, but every century brings 
them nearer together. 

It is by these zigzag lines that the human race 
goes forward. Possibly, after many vibrations, 
due to these opposing forces of individual interest 
and social need, mankind will learn how to coor¬ 
dinate them, and gain as their resultant a steady 
movement forward, — combining the benefits of 
private enterprise with the blessings of social co¬ 
operation, and realizing the divine order by loving 
their neighbors as themselves. 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


The most profound and perfect definition of 
property that I have ever seen is that of the Ro¬ 
man Catholic writer, Dr. Brownson : “ Property is 
communion with God through the material world.” 
The realization of this truth, and the practical ap¬ 
plication of it, would revolutionize society. The 
old Gnostic dualism which held matter to be essen¬ 
tially evil has been fatally persistent through all 
the Christian centuries : it was the root of monasti- 
cism; in every generation it has vitiated the theo¬ 
ries of Puritan as well as Papist about the uses of 
the external world. Those who regarded material 
things as essentially evil could not be expected to 
seek or find any moral profit in the use of them. 
If the taint of corruption abides upon the wealth 
that men accumulate here, all our contact with it 
must be somewhat contaminating. Necessary it 
may be to our existence in this world, but it is a 
necessary evil; the less we have to do with it, the 
better for our souls. We must needs get property, 
but in having it there is harm, and in using it there 
is peril; the only benefit we can derive from it is 
that which comes through the mortification of our 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


87 


natural love for it when we give it away. This was 
the view of many of the early church Fathers. 
“Rightly,” says Jerome, “does Jesus call wealth 
the unrighteous mammon, for all wealth arises 
from unrighteousness. The one can only gain 
what the other loses; hence the saying, 4 Every 
rich man is a rogue, or the heir of a rogue.’ ” 
That thrift is permissible some of the Father’s 
freely allow, but it is only because of the hardness 
of men’s hearts ; penury is the holier vocation. 
44 When the right use of wealth is spoken of ” by 
the early Fathers, says Dr. Uhlhorn, “giving it 
away is always dwelt on in a one-sided manner. 
Nay, it may be said that the Fathers see its right 
use in giving it away. Its use for our own necessi¬ 
ties is, indeed, conceded, and even the adornments 
and enjoyments of life permitted, but still these are 
already under a cloud. They are not exactly sins, 
but they are weaknesses.” 1 The seeds of commu¬ 
nism are in all this early teaching, and the germ of 
that primitive communism was the ascetic feeling 
about property. Thus, Augustine once urges that 
all the trouble among men, as wars, strifes, extor¬ 
tions, injustices of every kind, spring from individ¬ 
ual ownership. Over the things which we possess 
in common, like the sun and the atmosphere, he 
says, we never quarrel. 44 Let us, therefore, my 
brethren,” he exhorts, 44 abstain from the posses¬ 
sion of private property, or from the love of it, if 
we cannot abstain from the possession of it.” Not 
1 Christian Charity in the Early Church , p. 301. 


88 TOOLS AND THE MAN. 

all the Fathers talk in this tone ; some of the most 
clear and wholesome utterances on this subject in the 
whole range of Christian teaching are to be found 
in their writings. Thus Clement of Alexandria, as 
paraphrased by Dr. Uhlhorn, tells us that “ we are 
not to cast away our property. It is the material, 
the instrument, subjected to the right use of those 
who know how to make a right use of it. If any 
one makes the wrong use of a tool, the tool is blame¬ 
less. And this is the case with wealth wrongly ap¬ 
plied as it is by many. Its nature is to be useful, 
and everything depends upon how it is applied.” 1 
Nevertheless, the prevalent sentiment of those early 
times regarded property as a burden to the soul, 
and hoped for little good from the possession of it, 
or from the use of it except in almsgiving. It 
would be easy to forecast the mischief wrought by 
such a sentiment. If the most fundamental and 
universal need of human beings is a need of that 
which is morally injurious, if men must be largely 
occupied through all their lives in getting that 
which they would better not possess, the case is 
certainly unfortunate. To say that that which is 
necessary to my life is hurtful to my soul is to 
make a grave accusation against the Author of the 
universe. To tell men when they go out into this 
wide realm of material interests, that it is all for¬ 
eign to God’s kingdom, a hostile sovereignty that 
may never be subdued to the empire of the Christ, 
is to give them warrant and justification for all the 
1 Christian Charity in the Early Church , p. 130. 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


89 


evil they may be inclined to do therein. The 
ascetic theory of property opens the door to every 
kind of abuse. Who could be expected to make a 
right use of that which is essentially wrong ? 

This hoary heresy is not yet quite dead. The 
theory may not often find confessors, but the senti¬ 
ment is still unconsciously cherished. There are 
not many of those engaged in the accumulation of 
property who do not feel that their property in¬ 
terests are separate from, if not contrary to, their 
spiritual interests. No more mischievous error 
could be imagined. If those concerns of a man 
which occupy and must occupy a large share of his 
life are irreligious, or even unreligious, then reli¬ 
gion is and must be a secondary interest of his life. 
If he is necessarily injured, or at any rate stunted 
in his higher nature by getting and using money, 
and can only repair this injury by giving it away, it 
will certainly go hard with most of our neighbors. 

Over against this defective and dangerous doc¬ 
trine stands the wise word of the great Catholic 
teacher : “ Property is communion with God 

through the material world.” Let no man sup¬ 
pose that this is some mystical or transcendental 
notion; it is a statement as precise, as literal, as 
practical, as can be expressed in words. It is the 
fundamental fact on which the Christian doctrine 
of property is based. Until a man has compre¬ 
hended it, and all that it implies, he has not fully 
entered into the meaning of Christian discipleship. 
Let us consider some of these implications. 


90 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


I. This doctrine implies that God is the abso¬ 
lute owner of the material universe, and that we 
hold what we rightfully have under him. “ The 
earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the 
world, and they that dwell therein.” Here is the 
only original and absolute proprietorship. Let us 
not try to take this in some metaphorical or accom¬ 
modated sense. There are figures of rhetoric in 
the Bible, but this is not one of them. It is the 
literal fact. The earth does belong to the Creator. 
There are no absolute rights of property except 
his rights. 

But Paul says that there is a Spirit within us, a 
voice speaking in the secret places of our thought, 
and testifying to our spirits that we are the chil¬ 
dren of God. This is the deepest truth of human 
nature, the foundation fact of human history. It 
is the blessed message of the gospel which the 
Father of us all has been seeking, through all the 
generations, to bring home to human hearts. Very 
imperfectly have his children comprehended this 
great truth; the voice that was speaking in them 
of their divine relationships they have but faintly 
heard. Nevertheless, this is the portion of every 
one of us, though we often cast it from us, or bar¬ 
gain it away as Esau did for a little cheap enjoy¬ 
ment. 

The inference which Paul draws from this fact 
of the divine fatherhood is a bold one, but it is 
inevitable : “ The Spirit himself beareth witness 

with our spirit that we are children of God, and if 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


91 


children, then heirs” If the earth is the Lord’s, 
and the fullness thereof, we his children and heirs 
possess it through our relationship to him; our 
rights of property are all derived from him. 

The younger son in the parable claimed and re¬ 
ceived as his exclusive possession his portion of 
his father’s estate. The heavenly Father never 
willingly divides his estate in this manner. It is 
held for all his children as one patrimony. There is 
enough for all, — enough for maintenance, for com¬ 
fort, for enjoyment, for culture, for the highest 
development, for the fullest usefulness; and he 
desires that all his children shall have all they can 
use; there is no grudging distribution of the good 
gifts of Providence; if any one fail to receive as 
much as this, it is his own fault, or the fault of 
the other heirs; it is not through any defect in 
the infinite Bounty. But what any man receives 
of material good he takes from the hand of his 
heavenly Father; and he must consider the distri¬ 
bution as made continuously for his needs. The 
petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “ Give us this day 
our daily bread,” is no superfluous request, even 
when it falls from the lips of a reputed millionaire. 

It is involved in this statement that the property 
in my hands, be it much or little, has not been 
gained by despoiling my neighbor. I have not 
obtained it by robbery or fraud or extortion; I 
did not get it by taking advantage of the weakness 
or the ignorance or the necessity of my fellow-man, 
and thus coercing him to yield to me his portion. 


92 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


For all that I possess, which is not the direct pro¬ 
duct of my own labor, I have striven to give a fair 
equivalent, in service or commodity. If property 
is communion or copartnership with God in the 
possession and use of natural things, then I can 
have no property in that which I have obtained 
by injustice. So far as human law is concerned, 
my title may be good; I may have succeeded in 
extinguishing the legal claim of those from whom 
I have unrighteously taken these possessions, for 
human law is but a clumsy contrivance for secur¬ 
ing perfect justice, and often fails of its purpose. 
But we are not now talking about human legalities, 
we are talking about divine equities; and since all 
true property rights are based on our union with 
God, it is plain that we can have no property in 
that which we have gained by injustice. God has 
never been partner with us in spoliation or trickery. 
Of every possession thus gained, Proudhon’s apo¬ 
thegm is true: it is robbery. But it is not prop¬ 
erty; that is the error in Proudhon’s statement. 
Property is a word of divine significance, and we 
must not lightly apply it to possessions wrongfully 
obtained. We speak of the sacredness of property, 
and nothing is more sacred. Plunder is not sacred, 
indeed, but plunder is not property. The function 
of human law in this realm is to discriminate be¬ 
tween these two: to prevent plunder and to secure 
property. Because those who make and administer 
human law are neither omniscient nor infallible, 
this must be very imperfectly done, but it is the 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


93 


ideal which jurisprudence must keep steadily in 
view. 

Let us endeavor to realize a little more perfectly 
what is involved in this doctrine that property is 
communion with God through the material world. 
It implies that the material world is not essentially 
corrupt; it most clearly denies the old Gnostic 
heresy. When Jesus said, u My Father worketh 
hitherto,” he pointed to the perpetual divine activ¬ 
ity in nature. The first chapter of Genesis repre¬ 
sents God as putting forth his power to prepare 
the material world as an abode for man, and then 
giving life to man, and joining man with himself 
in possession of the things that had been made. 
“ And God said, Let us make man in our image, 
after our likeness: and let them have dominion 
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 
air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and 
over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
earth. And God created man in his own image, 
in the image of God created he him; male and 
female created he them. And God blessed them: 
and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, 
and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have 
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
of the air, and over every living thing that moveth 
upon the earth.” This may be allegory; even so, 
it sets forth the profoundest spiritual truth, when 
it shows the Creator himself at work fitting up the 
world for man’s abode, and calling man to be 
partner with him in this work. It is the Creator 


94 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


himself who has been at work, for ages on ages, to 
fertilize these meadows and these prairies, to stock 
them with grasses and grains, to plant the great 
forests on the mountain sides, to store the marble 
and the granite and the coal and the oil and the 
silver and the gold in the bosom of the earth 
against the time of man’s need. When men put 
forth their strength to cultivate this soil and to 
develop all this wonderful wealth, they are working 
together with God; they are thinking his thoughts 
after him, and moving along the line of his eternal 
purpose. It is strange that men should ever have 
deemed that in accepting the trust which God has 
put into their hands, and in becoming partners 
with him in the work that has employed him since 
the morning stars first sang together, they were 
engaging in an occupation that was essentially evil. 

If, now, the production of wealth is a holy avo¬ 
cation, it is plain that the possession and use of it 
cannot be unholy. That it may be held in an 
unholy spirit and used for unholy ends is too evi¬ 
dent, but this is an abuse of it; the normal 
method of holding and using it must be essentially 
holy. The problem is to discover this normal 
method. The normal method must be the divine 
method. If we are partners with the Divine 
Being in all this ownership, it is necessary for us 
to know what his purposes are respecting the 
wealth which by his aid we have accumulated. 
And we know that he regards it all as material for 
character-building. The life is more than the 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


95 


meat; the soul is better than the house it lives in; 
the character is the supreme concern, to which all 
earthly possessions are subordinate and tributary. 
The question for every man is, then, How can I 
hold this property, and how can I use it so that 
the divine purpose can be realized in my conduct, 
and the divine life nourished in my soul? By 
what frugality, by what expenditure, by what in¬ 
vestment, can I best realize God’s will in my own 
life and in the lives of those about me ? How 
can I administer this property in my hands so 
that it shall be a means of grace to me, and a 
benefit to my fellow-men ? Any use of it that 
tends to enlarge my understanding, to refine and 
ennoble my tastes, to deepen my affections, to 
broaden my sympathies, to develop the essential 
humanity of my nature, will be a right use of it; 
for he who formed this nature of mine summons 
me to perfection, and has given me these good 
things to aid me in striving after perfection. 

Any employment of my property which is cal¬ 
culated to promote the interests of character in my 
fellow-men must also be in accordance with the 
divine purpose. If it is my main purpose to hold 
and use my property in such a way that the com¬ 
ing of the kingdom of God may be hastened, and 
his will be done more perfectly in the world, then 
I am brought by my property into closer commun¬ 
ion and dearer fellowship with him. When this 
purpose rules the life, labor is worship, and trade 
is a sacrament. 


96 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


When we use property in this way we use it 
rightly, and so long as we use it rightly we have a 
right to use it. When we use it in any way which 
conflicts with the purpose for which God has given 
it to us, or which hinders the realization of that 
purpose, we are no longer in partnership with him, 
and our right is extinguished. You can have no 
moral right to any amount or any kind of prop¬ 
erty, the getting or the having of which makes 
you a worse man or keeps you from becoming a 
better man. Certainly, when we come down to 
the real rights in the case, we shall all admit that 
no man can acquire the moral right to become a 
knave. And if this is true, he can have no moral 
right to get or have that which makes him a 
bad man or hinders him from becoming a good 
man. 

II. This doctrine that property is communion 
with God through the material world involves, as 
we have seen, certain obligations toward our fel¬ 
low-men. The divine fatherhood implies the hu¬ 
man brotherhood. If we hold what we have as 
members of one family, family affection must con¬ 
trol the use of it. Our Father’s will respecting 
our brethren, as well as ourselves, must be the law 
of our conduct. Not our own exclusive welfare, 
but the welfare of all the rest as well, we are 
bound to seek. We cannot be in communion with 
him while we are indifferent to the happiness of 
those who are dear to him. The doctrine that our 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


97 


property, be it much or little, must be made ser¬ 
viceable to the general welfare, as well as to our 
individual well-being, follows, therefore, from the 
principle which we have just been considering. 

But we may easily establish the doctrine by a 
different course of reasoning. Let it be admitted 
as a principle of equity, that one ought not to re¬ 
ceive from any source great and constant benefits 
without making such return as he is able to make 
to his benefactors. Now every human being, liv¬ 
ing in civilized society, and accumulating wealth 
through his relation to society, receives from so¬ 
ciety great and constant benefits; is aided by 
society most efficiently in this work of accumulat¬ 
ing property; and ought, therefore, to hold and 
use his gains, not for his own exclusive benefit, 
but for the benefit, also, of his fellow-men. 

We saw, in our study of the doctrine of property 
in land, that the land is a gift of God to the nation 
for the benefit of all the people. Let us suppose 
that the nation has found a way of dividing its 
patrimony equitably among the people, on such 
terms of use and ownership as are calculated to 
promote the welfare of all. Let us suppose that, 
as the result of this distribution, I have in my pos¬ 
session a piece of land. My title to it is perfectly 
equitable. I may cultivate it, or I may build on 
it a shop or a factory. By either of these methods, 
by agriculture or by mechanical industry, I may 
produce and accumulate property. Have I an ex¬ 
clusive right to the property I thus accumulate ? 


98 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


I cannot have any exclusive right to the land ; 
this we have demonstrated. My right may he ex¬ 
clusive of the right of any other individual, hut 
cannot be superior to the claims of the whole peo¬ 
ple. But may I not have an exclusive right to 
the products derived from the land by my own 
labor? This question is answered by all jurists 
in the affirmative. It is considered as fundamen¬ 
tal to the doctrine of property, that every man 
should be protected in the enjoyment of the fruits 
of his labor; that his right to the wealth which he 
has created by his toil should be fully conceded. 
So far as jurisprudence can go, this principle is 
undoubtedly sound. Nor am I aware that ethics 
has any quarrel with law on this question. That 
value which a man by his own unaided toil has 
created may be his by exclusive right as long as 
he lives. Let us admit this. But the question 
comes back to every man, How much of the value 
of that property now in your hands was given to 
it by your own unaided toil ? 

Suppose you are a farmer ; the wealth that you 
have gathered from the soil is not the fruit of your 
unaided labor. Nature has been helping you might¬ 
ily, day by day and year by year. No small share 
of your wealth is due to the divine bounty of the 
soil. The Nation, acting as the representative of 
God, has permitted you to use this portion of its 
domain, and it expects you to use it for the public 
welfare. Some things you have no right to do 
with this land which you are cultivating: you have 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


99 


no right to impoverish it, so that it shall have less 
power to sustain life in coming time than it now 
possesses. You are bound , therefore , to use part 
of the product of your labor on the land in keep¬ 
ing the land fertile. This generation has no right 
to bequeath the land, stripped and despoiled of its 
life-giving power, to the generation following. The 
land is not put into your possession for any such 
purpose. So, then, it cannot be said that any man 
has an exclusive right to all that he can produce 
by his own labor upon the land, even though he 
may hold the land by the most equitable of all 
titles. 

But, turning from the case of the cultivator of 
the soil, let us consider the much simpler case of 
the artisan. His standing-room on the soil he has 
gained by an equitable distribution; the materials 
on which he expends his labor he has obtained, 
let us suppose, by fair exchanges ; the goods which 
he produces by his labor, or the money which he 
receives in exchange for them, are his property. 
Shall he say that property of this sort is exclusive ? 
that nobody else has any claims upon it ? He will 
not be able to maintain that position very long, for 
the tax-collector soon appears and demands a con¬ 
siderable slice of it. And if he protests that this 
property is all the fruit of his labor, the answer 
will be: 44 Be that as it may, you must contribute 
a part of the fruits of your labor for the mainte¬ 
nance of the government. While you have been 
working, the state has been standing near, warning 


100 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


off trespassers, guarding you against thieves, pro¬ 
tecting you in the acquisition and enjoyment of 
your property. Your gains would have been much 
smaller and far less secure if the government had 
not been vigilant and strong to defend your rights. 
In fact, the government has been cooperating with 
you in this industry. It is not true that this prop¬ 
erty in your hands is the fruit of your unaided 
labor. The state, through its officers and magis¬ 
trates, has been aiding you very powerfully in your 
work, by furnishing you protection. You owe to 
the state some return for this important service. 
Besides, every man who lives in a land like this 
must do something for the public welfare. Most 
likely he obtained the education which fits him to 
be an intelligent workman, in the public schools. 
Some contribution from the fruits of his labor is 
due to the state for the maintenance of these 
schools. And there are many other matters of 
general well-being, interests of intelligence and 
philanthropy for which the state must provide, and 
every citizen must bear his part. 

It appears, therefore, that no man who lives in 
society has an exclusive right to the fruit of his 
own labor. Some part of that is due, by law and 
by equity, to the commonwealth. 

But, passing by these civil relations and these 
legal claims, when these are satisfied, is there no 
further rightful claim upon the man’s possessions ? 
I am not asking about the demands of charity; I 
am speaking of the equities of the case, — of what 


/ 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


101 


is due from this man to others for value received. 
And I maintain that no man can accumulate prop¬ 
erty, in a social order like that in which we live, 
without incurring a heavy debt to society, — a debt 
that is by no means discharged when he has paid 
his taxes. Our fortunes, as well as our charac¬ 
ters, are due in no small part to our environment. 
Those who have amassed property in this genera¬ 
tion have done so by the use of a vast system of 
social and industrial machinery, which has been 
furnished to them without money and without 
price. They are the heirs of all the past ages of 
discovery, of invention, of study, of experiment, of 
organizing intelligence. Society has brought all 
these enormous gains down through the generations, 
and laid them at their feet. All these methods of 
communication, swift and cheap, by which time is 
multiplied and space is annihilated; all this won¬ 
derful utilization of natural force in machinery; all 
this mechanism of exchange, so intricate, and yet 
so beautiful in its action ; all these systems of in¬ 
dustrial organization, — what is all this but the 
costly and magnificent provision made by society 
for the use of the individual ? It is only because 
this provision has been made that large gains are 
possible to honest men. In no past time could 
property be accumulated by honest industry and 
enterprise as rapidly as it can be to-day. There 
were rich Romans, but their gains were gotten by 
rapine or extortion. There are rich Americans, 
too, whose wealth is mainly plunder ; but there are 


102 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


many others who by fairly legitimate means have 
acquired large possessions. This they never could 
have done had they not been the beneficiaries of 
a social and industrial order in which everything 
was made ready for their hands. To the society 
from which they have received so much they ought 
to make some adequate return. All such men, as 
Professor Graham has said, “ owe something more 
than they can ever hope to pay, to science, to civil¬ 
ization, to mankind generally, but especially to the 
living generation of their own countrymen, as the 
present usufructuaries of the blessings of civiliza¬ 
tion. . . . These men, who have drawn so much, 
owe much; but only a rarely exceptional man ac¬ 
knowledges the debt, and by means of hospital, 
scientific college, or other bounty distributes again 
to his countrymen and civilization part of what 
through them he has gathered.” 1 Such cases are 
not so exceptional on our side of the sea as they 
are on Professor Graham’s side, but among us 
they are far less common than they ought to be. 
And the fact to be kept continually in sight is, that 
such use of his large gains for the public benefit is 
not charity on the rich man’s part, but only a fair 
requital for services rendered him. Whoever holds 
property holds it subject to an equitable claim of 
this nature, a claim growing out of the conditions 
under which it was acquired. He may have gained 
it by legitimate industry or enterprise ; neverthe¬ 
less, the fruits of all legitimate industry or enter- 

1 The Social Problem , p. 457. 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


103 


prise are, in these days, very largely a dividend 
upon an enormous accumulation of social capital, 
of which the successful man has had the use. This 
social capital is the sum of those “ inappropriate 
utilities ” of which Professor Clark has written so 
suggestively . 1 Many of the finest and most pre¬ 
cious of the utilities, created by human labor can¬ 
not be appropriated by individuals. They cannot 
be monopolized, they cannot be entailed or trans¬ 
mitted by bequest; they are the gains of civiliza¬ 
tion. Of these every man avails himself when he 
sets out to accumulate a fortune. And the obliga¬ 
tion rests on him to see that this social capital is 
not wasted in his handling of it, — to transmit it to 
those who come after him in as good condition as 
he received it from those who went before him. 

A very large part of this social capital consists 
of those subtle elements of confidence and good¬ 
will which give life to all our industrial and com¬ 
mercial operations. The organization of labor, the 
mechanism of exchange, are the product of these 
elements. The property that has been gained by 
the action of these forces ought to be administered 
so that these forces shall not be weakened. They 
who use their possessions ostentatiously, arrogantly, 
selfishly, in such a way as to express contempt for 
their less fortunate fellow-men, and to earn the 
distrust of their neighbors, are doing what they 
can to build up barriers between classes, and to 
prevent that harmonious social cooperation by 
1 Philosophy of Wealth , chap. xi. 


104 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


which the accumulation of property is made pos¬ 
sible. They are destroying the ladder by which 
they have ascended. 

This social capital is the fruit, also, of the labors 
of a happy, hopeful, independent, energetic, enter¬ 
prising people, — a people mentally alert and 
morally vigorous. No other kind of people could 
have made such gains. The whole population has 
shared in the production of this social wealth. It 
is in those lands where the people are free, and 
where the gates of opportunity are open to all, and 
only there, that these gains have been made. In 
our own land, especially, invention, discovery, en¬ 
terprise, are in the air; faith in the future, hope 
of prosperity, love for the native land, have made 
us a happy and a prosperous people. Many of our 
keenest thinkers, our greatest inventors, our finest 
organizers, our bravest leaders, have come from the 
ranks of the toilers. A great share of these “ in- 
appropriable utilities ” by which we have all been 
enriched has thus been contributed by those of 
lowly origin. Now, whatever lessens the intelli¬ 
gence, the hopefulness, the moral vigor of the 
masses of the people impairs the value of that 
social capital by the use of which the more pros¬ 
perous among us make their gains. Whatever 
tends to make the working people sullen, spiritless, 
indifferent to the general welfare, tends to under¬ 
mine the foundations on which our prosperity rests. 
Unless we can have a happy, hopeful, enterprising 
populace, the vast possibilities of honest acquisition 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


105 


and secure possession will quickly vanish away. 
And the men who have gained property by means 
of these wholesome and helpful social conditions 
have a great responsibility for their preservation. 
Especially are the men who employ labor bound to 
see that those whom they employ lose no jot of 
heart or hope in this relation. The man who 
gathers about him a hundred or a thousand work¬ 
men, and, after enriching himself by means of their 
labor, turns them out into society filled with hate 
and spite and suspicion, completely out of harmony 
with the age in which they live, is one of the worst 
of malefactors. No matter how successful he may 
have been in a material point of view, the wealth 
which he has produced with his machinery is a 
paltry contribution to society when compared with 
the social capital which he has destroyed in his 
unsocial relations with his workmen. Just as the 
farmers of this generation have no right to “ skin ” 
the land and pass it over to the next generation 
robbed of its life-giving powers, so the men who 
have enjoyed the mighty accumulation of social 
capital which consists so largely in the intelligence 
and morality and trustworthiness and good-will 
and hopefulness and happiness of the people, and 
who have made, by means of it, accumulation of 
property, larger or smaller, have no right to “ skin ” 
society of this social wealth, and leave the world 
poorer than they found it in these qualities. As 
the farming class is bound by the highest of all 
obligations to give back to the land enough of its 


106 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


product to preserve its productive energies unim¬ 
paired, so “ the present usufructuaries of the bless¬ 
ings of civilization ” are bound to make liberal 
return to society of the wealth that they have gath¬ 
ered, and to make this return in ways that shall 
tend to preserve those moral qualities in the people 
which are the source of all the productive energies 
of society. There are a great many ways in which 
this can be done. Property may be used to pro¬ 
mote the intelligence, the virtue, and the happiness 
of the whole people by numberless beneficent min¬ 
istrations. By the building of churches that shall 
not be private religious club-houses, but places of 
assembly and instruction for the public; by the 
founding of schools of science and art; by the 
establishment of libraries and museums and read¬ 
ing-rooms and coffee-houses and public baths and 
public gardens and foundations for free lectures, — 
by all these and many other such methods, wealth 
may be used to promote the public welfare and 
preserve the public morals, and to brighten and 
bless the life of the people. And when it is so 
used, remember well, it is not charity in any true 
sense of the word; it is simply the payment of an 
honest debt, — a payment which law cannot com¬ 
pel, but which the highest principles of equity most 
solemnly enjoin. 

By one path we reached the truth that property 
is communion with God through the material 
world; by another path we have come to the com¬ 
plementary truth that property is fellowship with 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


107 


men through the material world. It is only through 
the love of God that we gain a just title to what 
we have; it is only in the love of our neighbors 
that it is rightly possessed and equitably used. 

III. Property is power. If only those posses¬ 
sions which we have rightfully acquired are in the 
truest sense our property, it is nevertheless true 
that our possessions, however we may have gained 
them, confer upon us while we hold .them a kind 
of power. Money is power. Wealth is power. 
In the use of this power a heavy responsibility 
rests on all those who hold it. It is not those alone 
who have much by whom this responsibility is in¬ 
curred ; they who have little bear it in their just 
proportion. It is not merely with his surplus, with 
what he holds after his desires are satisfied, that a 
man has power to do good or evil; there is power, 
also, to bring blessing or bale to many in that which 
he uses day by day. 

I am not now speaking of the wealth which is 
counted as capital in the organization of business, 
in the employment of labor. That use of wealth 
involves more direct and obvious obligations, of 
which I shall speak farther on. I am dealing now 
with what we devote to our own enjoyment, with 
the power that we wield in the spending of money. 
We are all able to see that wealth employed in 
production imposes great responsibilities on those 
who employ it; but we do not so clearly see that 
in the consumption of wealth an equal obligation is 


108 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


incurred; that consumption as well as production 
is an exercise of power. In production most of us 
work under orders, and the responsibility rests on 
those who employ us; in consumption we exercise 
our powers directly, and if mischief is done the 
fault is ours alone. 

Here is a mechanic on Saturday night with 
twelve dollars in his pocket, the wages of his week’s 
work. It is not a large sum, but there is power in 
it, — power to do vast harm to him and to those 
dependent on him; power to confer great benefits 
upon him and upon them. Naturally our thoughts 
go first, as his thoughts should go, to the effect 
which will be produced by the expenditure of this 
money upon his life and the lives of those for whom 
he is responsible. It will bring to him and to them 
shelter, food, comfort, beauty, culture, — no great 
amount of these commodities and values, but 
enough, if judiciously used, to keep them in good 
health and hope till pay-day comes round again. 
There is power even in a few coppers or dimes to 
open for this man and his children some of the 
richest treasures of the human intellect; for the 
forty-eighth part of it he can buy the poems of 
Milton or of Scott, — more books than he can find 
leisure to read before the next Saturday night. 
And there are innocent pleasures, not a few, that 
he may easily command for himself and his house¬ 
hold with a small fraction of his week’s earnings. 
There is power here which will bring into his home 
health and wisdom and comfort and good cheer, if 
it be rightly used. 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


109 


On the other hand, there are infinite energies 
of destruction and desolation in this small sum if 
it be wrongly used. It may be expended in de¬ 
bauching this workman’s manhood; it may toll 
him into vile companionships and dens of infamy; 
it may purchase for him suffering and shame ; it 
may fill his home with madness and terror and 
despair. A world of cursing as well as of bless¬ 
ing lives in this workman’s weekly wage; and 
many there be who choose to buy with it, for them¬ 
selves and for their wives and little ones, cursing 
instead of blessing. 

But the money in this workman’s pocket has 
power, not only over his own life and the life of 
his household, but over the lives of those in whose 
hands he will place it. This is the fact on which I 
desire to fix your attention. These twelve dollars 
constitute a demand for commodities or services 
of one sort or another. The money will be spent, 
and the spending of the money will set people 
at work in various places, on various objects. If 
the workman spends it week by week for beef and 
flour and sugar and tea and coal and house-rent 
and clothing and books and newspapers, his de¬ 
mand for these commodities sets people at work 
to furnish them. If he spends a good share of it 
in the saloon for beer or whiskey, he helps to 
create a demand for beer and whiskey, and for a 
multiplication of the places where beer and whiskey 
are sold; if he spends it in the gambling-places, 
he increases the demand for the services of gam- 


110 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


biers and for tbe maintenance of the dens that 
they infest; if he spends it in any vicious or de¬ 
basing indulgence, he becomes the employer of 
those who furnish this indulgence, and pays them 
for their service. The money in this workman’s 
pocket, and the money in your pocket and mine as 
well, is power over the lives of other men. The 
manner in which we spend our money determines 
the manner in which some of our neighbors spend 
their time and strength. If we exchange it all for 
things useful and wholesome and beautiful, we em¬ 
ploy them in producing such things. If we part 
with it for things harmful and worthless and de¬ 
basing, we employ them in producing such things. 
If there are, as I estimate, every Saturday night, 
thirty thousand dollars in the pockets of the peo¬ 
ple of the city where I live, destined to be paid 
during the coming week for intoxicating liquors, 
that demand of thirty thousand dollars is very 
likely to put more than a thousand people in mo¬ 
tion to distill and brew and distribute such bever¬ 
ages. This money, thus devoted, is the power 
that drives this drunkard-making machinery. I 
am aware that there is another side to this matter, 
— that the supply does something to create the 
demand; but the deeper and more important eco¬ 
nomical fact is that the supply is in much larger 
measure evoked by the demand. 

“ Whenever we spend money,” says Mr. Ruskin, 
“ we of course set people at work ; that is the 
meaning of spending money . . . . Well, your 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


Ill 


shallow people, because they see that, however they 
spend money, they are always employing some¬ 
body, and therefore doing some good, think and 
say to themselves that it is all one how they spend 
it, — that all their apparently selfish luxury is in 
reality unselfish, and is doing just as much good 
as if they gave all their money away, or perhaps 
more good; and I have heard foolish people even 
declare it as a principle of political economy that 
whoever invented a new want conferred a good on 
the community. . . . Granted that whenever we 
spend money, for whatever purpose, we set people 
to work, and passing by, for the moment, the 
question whether the work we set them to is all 
equally healthy and good for them, we will assume 
that whenever we spend a guinea we provide an 
equal number of people with healthy maintenance 
for a given time. But, by the way in which we 
spend it, we entirely direct the labor of those peo¬ 
ple during that given time. We become their 
masters or mistresses, and we compel them to 
produce within a certain period a certain article. 
Now, that article may be a useful and lasting one, 
or it may be a useless and perishable one; it may be 
one useful to the whole community, or useful only 
to ourselves. And our selfishness and folly or our 
virtue and prudence are shown, not by our spend¬ 
ing money, but by our spending it for the wrong 
or the right thing; and we are wise and kind, not 
in maintaining a certain number of people for a 
given period, but only in requiring them to pro- 


112 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


duce during that period the kind of things which 
shall he useful to society, instead of those which 
are only useful to ourselves.” 1 In these words of 
a master a thought is clearly stated which we have 
need to ponder. The power over the lives of other 
men which we always exercise when we spend 
money ought to be exercised with far more caution 
and conscientiousness than we are wont to use. 

Spending money for vicious indulgences not 
only harms ourselves ; it demoralizes those whom 
we thus employ to furnish us these vicious indul¬ 
gences. The hundreds of millions of dollars that 
are annually consumed in this country for vice 
are simply devoted to employing hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of men and women as the purveyors and 
ministers of vice. Woe to those who use their 
power for such infernal purposes ! 

In expending our money for enjoyments that 
are not vicious, there is also need of care and con¬ 
scientiousness. Many things are offered for sale 
into which the worker’s life was wrought. Not a 
little of our modern manufacture is slow murder. 
We do not always know its products when they 
are offered to us ; but when we do know them we 
shall spurn them. I think that we ought to take 
pains to detect them. It is the demand for cheap 
goods that is responsible, to a large extent, for 
starvation wages. The victims of the sweater are 
really the victims of the consumers. 

So far as we may be able, we shall use the 
1 Political Economy of Art, p. 41. 


PROPERTY IN GENERAL. 


113 


power intrusted to us in the encouragement of 
healthful industries by which things useful and 
beautiful are produced, in industries in which the 
laborers gain a decent subsistence and increase 
the nation’s store of all that is good and fair, and 
in the command of services which shall ennoble, 
and not degrade, those who render them. 

Upon those who have large properties this doc¬ 
trine presses solemnly. Much will be required of 
him to whom much is given. The possession of 
great power brings great responsibilities. The 
man who consumes his tens of thousands yearly, 
does he comprehend the power that he wields, and 
the obligation to use it beneficently ? Not uncon¬ 
scious is he of his power. The supple hinges of 
the knee crooked before him every day keep him 
well advised of that. The effect of this power on 
the lives of those about him who want a share of 
his money is evident enough to him. He knows 
that there is a subtle energy in this wealth which 
he possesses that will warp the conscience of some 
men and corrupt the virtue of some women ; that 
there are many round about him, whom he could 
not convince by reason nor persuade by affection, 
whom he can bend to his purposes by the use of 
this power. This money of his will purchase com¬ 
mercial falsehoods and frauds, newspaper adula¬ 
tion, votes, nominations, legislative acts, judicial 
decisions ; what cannot money do, if it is shrewdly 
manipulated ? Unhappily for this land, there are 
vast numbers of men among us who possess this 


114 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


power, and who are not slow to employ it for such 
unrighteous purposes. 

Others there are who possess the same power, 
and who seek to use it wisely and helpfully for the 
succor of the weak, for the support of the heavy 
laden, for the defense of public virtue and the 
enlargement of public welfare. In the service of 
these great interests money is not omnipotent; 
there is much that it cannot do; there are ends 
which it cannot compass ; there are ministries for 
which a loftier and a mightier power is needed 
than that which is incarnated in the substances and 
the symbols of material wealth. But there is much 
that it can do ; it is a force by which, when it is 
rightly directed, vast and beneficent effects may 
be wrought; and it will be a good day for the 
church of God and the world of men when the 
nature of this power is better understood, and 
when it is turned to consecrated uses; when prop¬ 
erty is seen by all who call themselves Christians 
to be rightly held only through communion with 
God, and rightly used only for the welfare of 
men. 


V. 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 

It is sometimes denied that there is any labor 
question, or, at any rate, that there is just founda¬ 
tion for one. A few crazy anarchists, it is said, 
are trying to stir up discontent among the working 
people; but the people at large are not really dis¬ 
contented, nor have they any reason to be. They 
were never so well off as they are to-day; they 
would not think of complaining, if these imported 
agitators, and a few doctrinaire philanthropists 
who might be in a better business, did not keep 
putting mischievous notions into their heads. 
Chicago happily hanged her anarchists; if every 
other city will select a few of its most conspicuous 
labor reformers and send them to Terra del Fuego, 
we shall get along very well. 

This kind of talk is common in some quarters, 
albeit the tone of such objurgations is a little less 
acrimonious than it was a few years ago. The 
struggles between employers and employed, which 
are becoming more and more frequent and general; 
the combinations of workmen, which are certainly 
growing formidable; and such an exhibition of 
political strength as has been furnished in some of 


116 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


our elections, make it plain that discontent exists, 
far deeper and more pervasive than any little band 
of fanatical agitators could have fomented. Dur¬ 
ing the last summer, in three States and in one 
Territory, troops were called out to suppress insur¬ 
rections of laborers. A labor question there cer¬ 
tainly is, and it is the most urgent question before 
this country at this hour. To say that there is no 
ground for this uprising is to say that the great 
mass of the working people are either so ignorant 
that they cannot understand their own circum¬ 
stances and their own needs, or so unreasonable 
and selfish that they are willing to destroy the in¬ 
dustries of the country for the sake of gratifying 
their whims and jealousies. I am not willing to 
bring such an accusation against them. Doubtless 
they sometimes exaggerate the evils of their condi¬ 
tion, and there is often want of true perspective in 
the view which they take of social questions; one¬ 
sided and distorted representations are even found 
in the books and newspapers which speak in the 
interests of capital. But no such general restless¬ 
ness and dissatisfaction ever spring up in society 
without an adequate cause; and the idea of holding 
a few leaders responsible for all this fever and 
tumult is like holding the pimples on the skin re¬ 
sponsible for the poison in the blood, or the flying 
chimney-pots for the force of the gale. Those 
persons who belittle the present agitation after 
this manner exhibit profound ignorance of the real 
conditions of society. 


THE LAB OB QUESTION. 


117 


But is not this disturbance, after all, destitute 
of justification? many are inquiring. Are not the 
working classes better off to-day than they ever 
were before? I wish it were possible to give a 
precise and conclusive answer to this question. I 
can quote to you strong authorities on both sides; 
but the question is so large that it is ahnost im¬ 
possible to speak about it with any sense of com¬ 
prehensiveness and assurance. That the average 
wage-worker of to-day can buy with his daily wage 
more food and clothing and fuel than the average 
wage-worker of a century or two ago could buy 
with his daily wage is undoubtedly true. But the 
question is one of annual rather than of daily 
wages, and the wage-worker of to-day loses so 
much time through failures, depressions, changes 
of business due to changing fashions, and to the 
oppressive discriminations of the railroads, that it 
is an open question whether his earnings year by 
year are larger, counted in necessaries of life, than 
those of the wage-worker of former times. We 
are often pointed to the improved manner of living 
of the workingmen of to-day, to the variety and 
fineness of their food, to the many articles of com¬ 
parative luxury that are found in their homes. It 
is true that the standard of comfort, as thus exhib¬ 
ited, is higher than once it was; but the standard 
of comfort is almost always fixed — unwisely, of 
course — in the days of prosperity. If a man re¬ 
ceives a dollar and a half a day when he is at 
work, he generally adjusts his expenditure to an 


118 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


income of a dollar and a half a day; when the 
work ceases, if he does not appeal to the city or 
the Benevolent Society for aid, he runs in debt at 
the grocery and the butcher shop and the coal 
dealer’s, and his rent falls in arrears. When work 
begins again there is a debt to pay. It is hard to 
reduce the scale of living, to purchase plainer food 
and clothing than that to which he has been ac¬ 
customed, and the debt lingers and accumulates, 
and is often at length dishonored. This is bad 
economy and bad morality; but it is the natural 
result of an industrial condition as feverish and 
shifting as ours is at the present time. The fact 
that a high standard of comfort appears to have 
been set up in many workingmen’s homes is not, 
then, a sure indication of real prosperity. Many 
of them cannot afford to live at the rate at which 
we find them living; if they should make their 
daily expenditure conform to their annual income, 
they would live far more plainly than they do. 

The census of 1880 reports 258,840 manufactur¬ 
ing establishments in the United States, employ¬ 
ing 2,788,980 hands, and paying $947,919,674 in 
wages. This is an average annual wage of 1309 
a year. These “hands” include a good many 
women and children. The estimate of Mr. Carroll 
D. Wright, based upon that census and other in¬ 
vestigations, was that the workingman of ten years 
ago earned on an average about $400 a year; that, 
he thought, might be regarded as the sum on 
which the average workingman’s family must sub- 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


119 


sist. President Harrison’s last message gives the 
figures of the census of 1890 for the mechanical 
industries of seventy-five leading cities; by these 
figures it appears that the average annual wage in 
these cities has increased from $386 in 1880 to 
$547 in 1890, or more than forty-one per cent. I 
think that no one will be more surprised at this 
intelligence than the wage-workers themselves. If 
so great an improvement in their condition has 
taken place within the last ten years, it is a little 
strange that they should not have heard of it. It 
would appear that the tabulators of the census 
bureau must have got hold of facts which are 
known to nobody else in the community. How 
these averages were made up we do not know. 
There is no greater snare to the average investi¬ 
gator than the doctrine of averages. The pitfall 
is one into which a good many of us, at one time 
or another, have fallen. It will never do to add 
the average wage of seventy-five different cities 
together and divide that sum by seventy-five in 
order to get the average wage of the whole labor¬ 
ing population of those cities. Suppose that Wal- 
tham, for example, has 2,000 highly skilled workers 
whose average wage is $600, and that New York 
has 100,000 workers whose average wage is $300. 
The rash statistician might say that the average 
wage of workers in those two cities was $450. In 
fact, it would be $305.98. 

There is, also, much room for sophistication in 
the classification of hands. If the superintend- 


120 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


ents, managers, overseers, and clerks are under 
one computation reckoned out, and under another 
reckoned in, your statistical comparisons are worth¬ 
less. There is reason for believing that statistics 
are often collected for political purposes; in such 
cases their conclusions are to be distrusted. It is 
an infinite pity that this whole business cannot be 
wholly dissociated from politics, and placed in the 
hands of a permanent bureau of competent investi¬ 
gators. 

I am not, therefore, inclined to believe that there 
has been in these seventy-five cities an increase in 
wages of forty-one per cent, within the last ten 
years ; nor is it probable that the average annual 
wage of laborers in these cities amounts to $547. 
We must wait for a much more careful examination 
of these reports before we accept this optimistic 
estimate. If it turns out that the average working¬ 
man’s family has had even twenty-five per cent, 
added to its income within the last ten years, I 
shall be greatly surprised. But let us suppose that 
this is true. Let us concede, for the sake of the 
argument, that their income now amounts to $500. 

Certainly life can be supported upon this income, 
if it is carefully used; but it is a narrow and mea¬ 
gre subsistence that it will furnish to a family of 
five. Rent, in most cases, will absorb one fifth of 
it; that leaves eighty dollars a year, one dollar and 
fifty-three cents a week for each one, to pay for 
food, clothing, fuel, lights, medicine, amusement, 
travel, and incidental expenses. A family can live 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 121 

on this; many families do; but not, surely, in 
princely fashion. Sit down and cipher out the 
possible bill of fare, the allowance for wardrobe, 
the minimum of coal and oil required, the remain¬ 
der for luxuries and pleasures, and you can easily 
convince yourself that it is not a sirt to be dissatis¬ 
fied with an annual income of five hundred dol¬ 
lars. 

This penury would be endured, no doubt, much 
more cheerfully if there were not so many signs 
of plenty on every side. The same high authority 
which puts the wage-worker’s income of ten years 
ago at four hundred dollars a year estimated that 
those living on salaries would receive, on an average, 
one thousand dollars a year. To some of us this 
would not seem excessive; but the difference be¬ 
tween five hundred dollars a year and one thousand 
dollars a year, to a family of five, is the difference 
between penury and abundance. The smaller sum 
barely suffices for the commonest and coarsest 
needs; the larger sum brings into the house light 
and cheer, beauty and enjoyment. The value of 
the alleviations and the comforts which this extra 
five hundred dollars signifies can be very imper¬ 
fectly estimated save by those who once enjoyed 
them, and are now forced to dispense with them. 

If the people who live on salaries have, as a rule, 
so much more to spend than the people who work 
for wages, it is certain that the owners of the cap¬ 
ital and the captains of industry are still more 
prosperous. We have no means of guessing what 


122 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


the average income of persons of this class may be. 
Some of them make but small gains and live in a 
simple manner; but the palaces and the carriages 
and the silks and the furs and the diamonds and 
the jewelry that we all see are proof enough that 
some of them have contrived to command the spend¬ 
ing of a good many thousands a year. 

It is this contrast of the luxury and splendor 
round about him with his own scanty fare and 
sharp limitations that causes, as we have already 
seen, the laborer’s discontent. “ The laboring 
classes,” says Professor Graham, “ do all the mo¬ 
notonous and disagreeable and dangerous work for 
our benefit, for the benefit of the classes above 
them. They have little or no real liberty, which is 
incompatible with their hard work, and they have 
little money over their own needs and those of their 
families. . . . On the other hand, life for the fortu¬ 
nate was never, in any age nor under any civiliza¬ 
tion, a greater gift, or susceptible of grander possi¬ 
bilities than it is to-day. Even for men with only 
moderate incomes life was never more enjoyable, 
never promised so much. And the toiling multi¬ 
tude see not only much of this to arouse their envy, 
but they see on all sides all the outward and splen¬ 
did and ostentatious signs of limitless wealth. . . . 
It is comparative poverty in the midst of this 
boundless and ever-increasing wealth ; it is compar¬ 
ative slavery of the toilers in the midst of increased 
liberty, leisure, luxury, and the increased pleasure 
and power which wealth in our time confers, that 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 123 

makes the grievance of the laborer and raises the 
grudge in his heart.” 1 

“ In perfectly simple states of society,” says 
Hermann Lotze, “the various dispositions which 
even there have place appear side by side, as if 
they all had an equal right to exist, just as the 
different kinds of animals, for none of which is it 
any reproach to be what it is: it is to a high degree 
of refinement that there is first opposed as its anti¬ 
type that coarseness which, while it knows all the 
newly discovered and newly developed moral rela¬ 
tions, despises or misuses all of them. Just in the 
same way, poorness of external appearance is no 
reproach, is often picturesque, at a stage of civ¬ 
ilization in which men have few wants, and sat¬ 
isfy these in the most primitive and simple manner. 
On the other hand, this same poverty assumes the 
peculiar character of squalor, when it appears in 
the midst of a society the life of which is based 
upon a very complicated and intricately branching 
system of satisfying human wants. Poverty, tak¬ 
ing isolated and disconnected fragments from this 
system, becomes subject to wants which it has no 
assured permanent and adequate means of satis- 
fying.” 2 

One may be naked and unashamed in Paradise; 
but when the fashion of wearing clothes becomes 
universal, nakedness becomes embarrassing. Our 
miseries are mostly relative; and it is by compari- 

1 The Social Problem, pp. 5, 6. 

2 Microcosms , ii. 387. 


124 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


son that the laborer has come to feel that he is 
not so well off as he ought to be, in the midst of 
the abundance which his labor has helped to create. 

I am not disposed, however, to go very exten¬ 
sively into the discussion of the question whether 
the laborer is right or wrong in his opinion that he 
is losing ground, because the facts on which a safe 
judgment can be based are not accessible. It is 
largely a matter of impressions. But I confess that 
I am strongly inclined to take the workingman’s 
view. My experience as a pastor for thirty years, 
of churches in manufacturing communities, and 
my close observation of the conditions of life among 
the working classes, do not lead me to believe that 
the problem of existence is growing easier for these 
people. Two or three tremendous facts confront 
me whenever I endeavor to put an optimistic con¬ 
struction upon present tendencies in the labor mar¬ 
ket. It is only a few years ago that we had, accord¬ 
ing to the careful estimates of Colonel Wright, one 
million laborers standing idle in the market-place 
because no man would hire them. These were not 
tramps ; they were men who wanted to work, and 
could find nothing to do. This million of laborers 
represented, probably, three and a half or four 
million sufferers. For a whole year they waited 
for the paralyzed industries to revive. Can any 
one estimate the distress, the physical deterioration, 
the loss of moral stamina and self-respect, entailed 
by such a calamity ? That is one fact. Another 
is, that these periods of industrial depression tend 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


125 


to return at shorter intervals, and to remain longer 
when they come. They are less violent than once 
they were, but more persistent. The dumb ague 
has succeeded to the chills and fever, in our indus¬ 
trial system. Every one of these industrial depres¬ 
sions pushes a multitude of families into the abyss 
of pauperism. The number of paupers seems to 
be diminishing in Great Britain ; it is as surely 
increasing in this country, if we count among the 
paupers all those who receive outdoor relief in our 
cities during the winters. The proportion of the 
population of the cities that is aided from the pub¬ 
lic purse or from private charity is becoming omi¬ 
nously large. The alarming growth of this element 
in our population has led to the formation, every¬ 
where, of charity organization societies, whose 
twofold function is the relief of the needy and the 
repression of pauperism. In the presence of these 
facts, I am not able to take so hopeful a view as 
some wise men take of the present condition of 
our working people. It seems to me that an army 
out of whose ranks such a host of stragglers and in¬ 
valids and cripples is constantly dropping cannot be 
in a very vigorous condition, physically or morally. 
And without trying to analyze the figures of the 
statisticians, which are too incomplete to be of any 
great value, I come back to the fact that the work¬ 
ing people generally think they have a grievance, 
and are up in arms to redress it. The rapid growth 
of the trades-unions and the Knights of Labor, the 
spread of the new labor party, and many other such 


126 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


tokens indicate the workingman’s view of the case. 
The politicians are beginning to listen with great 
respect to his complaints ; some of the soundest of 
our political economists go part of the way with 
him in his demands, and not a few clear-headed 
business men are ready to assent to the words of 
Chauncey M. Depew, president of the New York 
Central Railroad, and one of the largest employers 
of labor in this country : “ The workingman has a 
grievance. We may not clearly understand it; he 
may not know very well what it is; but it exists.” 
Is it possible to find out what it is ? 

In the minds of some of the laborers, this griev¬ 
ance consists of the fact that the workman fails to 
receive the entire product of his labor. This, they 
insist, is the only equitable arrangement. “ All 
wealth,” they say, “ is produced by labor; the 
men who produce it are entitled to the whole of it. 
They do not receive the whole of it; they receive, 
in fact, but a small share of it. The men who 
call themselves capitalists, or employers, get the 
most of it. This is the fundamental injustice. The 
whole organization of industry is on an iniquitous 
basis, and always has been. Under slavery, the 
capitalist employer took the whole of the work¬ 
man’s earnings', and gave him, so long as he found 
it profitable to do so, enough food and shelter to 
sustain his life. Under feudalism, the capitalist 
employer permitted the serf to work for himself 
certain days in the week, and required him to work 
for him the rest of the time. Under the wage sys- 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


127 


tem, the capitalist employer pays the workman a 
certain wage, but this wage is only a part of what 
the workman produces by his labor ; the work¬ 
man’s labor creates a large surplus value which 
the capitalist employer takes for himself. He is 
not entitled to it. It all belongs to the man who 
produced it.” 

This is the substance of the doctrine of Karl 
Marx in his famous book on “ Capital,” which, 
through translations and expositions in newspaper 
articles and speeches in workingmen’s assemblies, 
has filtered down into the minds of the people, and 
is greatly influencing the thought of the workmen 
on both continents at the present time. “ Why 
do you talk of profit sharing?” said a workingman, 
rather indignantly, to me, not long ago, at the 
close of an address. “ Why should the man who 
does the work share the wealth that he produces 
with anybody ? Who else has any right to it but 
the man who produces it ? ” The extent to which 
this doctrine of Marx has permeated the thought 
of the wage-workers is not probably suspected by 
most of those who employ them. The manifestoes 
of the various labor organizations express this 
idea more or less clearly. The Knights of Labor 
speak moderately ; they declare in their constitu¬ 
tion that it is one of their aims “to secure for the 
workers the full enjoyment of the wealth they 
create.” 1 The National Labor Union, in its Plat¬ 
form of Principles, affirms: “ W x e further hold 
i Art. II. 


128 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


that all property or wealth is the product of phy¬ 
sical or intellectual labor employed in productive 
industry, and in the distribution of the produc¬ 
tions of labor. That laborers ought of right, and 
would, under a just monetary system, receive or 
retain the larger proportion of their productions,” 1 
etc. The International Working People’s Asso¬ 
ciation thus expounds : “ Our present society is 
founded on the expoliation of the propertiless 
classes by the propertied. The expoliation is such 
that the propertied (capitalists) buy the working 
force, body and soul, of the propertiless, for the 
price of the mere costs of existence (wages) and 
take for themselves, that is, steal, the amount 
of new values (products) which exceeds this price, 
whereby wages are made to represent the necessi¬ 
ties instead of the earnings of the wage laborer.” 2 
The Socialistic Labor Party lays down this as the 
first plank of its platform: “ Labor being the only 
creator of all wealth and civilization, it rightfully 
follows that those who perform all labor and 
create all wealth should enjoy the result of their 
toil.” 3 Such ideas are current among our work¬ 
ing people. Laveleye says that these doctrines of 
Marx, “ translated into common language in petty 
socialist journals, have become the workingman’s 
catechism throughout Germany,” 4 and the state- 

1 Quoted by Professor Ely in The Labor Movement in America , 
p. 335. 

2 Ibid. p. 359. 

4 The Socialism of To-Day, p. 24. 


Ibid. p. 366. 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


129 


ment is not far from the truth with respect to our 
own country. What is more significant is the fact 
that these doctrines of Marx are drawn directly, 
by natural if not always quite fair deductions, 
from the teachings of orthodox political economy, 
from the propositions of Adam Smith and Ricardo 
and Bastiat. In the very first sentence of his fa¬ 
mous book Adam Smith says, “ The annual labor 
of every nation is the fund which originally sup¬ 
plies it with all the necessaries and conveniences 
of life which it annually consumes; ” 1 and again, 
more expressly, “ Labor alone, therefore, never 
varying in its own value, is alone the real stand¬ 
ard by which the value of all commodities can at 
all times and places be estimated and composed.” 2 
Ricardo’s theory of value rests also on this founda¬ 
tion. “ All things become more or less valuable,” 
he says, “ in proportion as more or less labor was 
bestowed on their production.” 3 Grant these 
premises, and the conclusions of Marx are inevita¬ 
ble. Here is a fine illustration of the speciousness 
of a purely deductive method in political economy. 
I do not think that the complaints and demands 
of the working people of to-day are wholly un¬ 
reasonable, but they are partly so; and the ele¬ 
ment of unreason that they contain is a logical 
inference from the teachings of our most illustrious 
political economists. It is true that Smith and 
Ricardo somewhat modify their statements on this 

1 Wealth of Nations , p. 1. 2 Ibid. p. 34. 

3 Political Economy, ch. i. 1. 


130 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


point; they are not always consistent with them¬ 
selves ; they saw, now and then, the complementary 
truth; hut the emphasis of their teaching rests on 
these sentences which the Socialists have turned 
to good account. 

The very first thing to do, in the conduct of 
this discussion, is, therefore, to get these erroneous 
ideas out of the minds of the working people. It 
is not true that labor is the sole cause of value or 
of wealth. Many substances and possessions have 
great value on which no labor has ever been ex¬ 
pended. There are building-lots in every large city 
on which not a stroke of labor was ever performed, 
which possess great value. There are steep and bar¬ 
ren hillsides all over this country on which no labor 
has ever been expended, but which will sell to-day 
for enormous sums of money, because it is known 
that beneath their rugged surfaces lie treasures of 
oil or coal or iron or marble. There are millions of 
acres of virgin soil in the West, never yet tickled 
with the hoe or embroidered with the plowshare, 
which are of great value to their fortunate posses¬ 
sors. If labor is the sole source of value, then all 
differences in the value of commodities must be due 
to differences in the amount of labor bestowed 
upon them. But land on the principal street of 
my own city is probably worth fifteen hundred dol¬ 
lars a front foot, whereas land on the outskirts of 
the city is worth, perhaps, ten dollars a front foot; 
and far more labor has been bestowed on the 
cheaper land than on the dearer. Mr. Macleod 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


131 


has some trenchant talk along this line which I 
may as well quote : — 

“ If labor be the sole cause of value, a thing 
once produced by labor must always have value, 
and the same value; but this is notoriously contrary 
to experience, because it is notorious that a thing 
may have value in one place, and not in another. 
. . . Take a bag of sovereigns among the Eski¬ 
mos, and where would their value be ? ... If any 
one were to set up a manufactory of watches, or 
reclaim land and grow fine fields of wheat, in the 
centre of Australia, where there was no demand 
for the watches or the corn, where would their 
value be? Moreover, if labor be the sole cause 
of value, if a thing is once produced, its value 
could never vary: which is Ricardo’s express doc¬ 
trine. But this is contrary to all experience, be¬ 
cause things, after they have been produced, and 
all labor upon them has been ended, constantly 
vary in their value from day to day, and from hour 
to hour, and from year to year. Thus, pictures by 
one master constantly rise in value, and pictures 
by another master diminish in value, long after the 
hands that painted them are cold in the grave. . . . 
In the reign of George III., there was a very wide¬ 
spread fashion to wear shoe-buckles; this manufac¬ 
ture employed a very large number of persons. All 
of a sudden these buckles went out of fashion; the 
demand totally ceased; and the people employed 
in making them were thrown into the greatest dis¬ 
tress. But, according to Ricardo, the labor of the 


132 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


men who made the buckles was of the same value 
when there was a demand for them and when there 
was no demand for them. Some years ago, the 
fashion of ladies wearing straw bonnets suddenly 
went out, and the manufacturers of them . . . 
were thrown into great distress. But, according 
to Ricardo, their labor was of exactly the same 
value when there was a demand for straw bonnets 
and when there was none. Hence we see that even 
with respect to material things there are many 
upon which no labor was ever bestowed which 
have great value and different degrees of value; 
and even of those upon which labor has been be¬ 
stowed, the labor is not the force or cause of their 
value.” 1 

There is also a large class of values of which 
this is even more evidently true. General Tom 
Thumb was the possessor of a commodity which 
had great economical value, and by means of 
which he realized large revenues. His diminutive¬ 
ness in stature was a marketable commodity. It 
possessed the property of gratifying a human de¬ 
sire, — not the noblest of human desires, indeed, 
nor the meanest, either, — curiosity. But this 
diminutiveness of stature which was the source of 
wealth to General Thumb was not the product of 
labor. 

The manager of the American Opera hears a 
phenomenal voice ringing through the corridor of 
the hotel where he is sojourning. Immediately he 

1 Elements of Economics, i. 246. 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


133 


seeks out the chambermaid who is the possessor of 
the voice, and offers her maintenance and wages if 
she will render him service under the direction and 
training of his chief musicians. There was money 
in that voice, as the saying is. But the value thus 
discovered was not the result of labor. 

Here are two young men, equal in ability, in ex¬ 
perience, in training, working side by side in the 
same office. There is a certain position of respon¬ 
sibility to be filled by those who have watched 
them carefully and know them both, and one of 
them is taken, and the other left. Why ? They 
are equally industrious, equally intelligent, equally 
competent. So far as their abilities could be im¬ 
proved by labor, they are equally qualified. But 
one of them is more trustworthy than the other. 
His superior trustworthiness has a distinct eco¬ 
nomic value. It is worth money in the market. He 
who possesses it can command a larger income than 
he who possesses it not. But this is a purely 
moral quality; it is not, in any sense of the word, 
the product of labor. Neither the quality itself, 
nor the gain by which it is remunerated, can be 
said to be the fruit of labor. 

It is very clear, then, that wealth is not wholly 
the product of labor. Labor is one of the sources 
of wealth, but it is by no means the only source. 
A great many other forces besides the labor force 
enter as factors into the product which we call the 
wealth of the nation. And when the manual la¬ 
borers claim the whole product as theirs by right 


134 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


of creation, they make an extravagant claim, for 
which sound reason furnishes no justification. 

Every product of human labor possesses value in 
proportion as it satisfies some human desire. If 
the maker produces it for himself, he may be sup¬ 
posed to know what his own desire is, and how to 
satisfy it. But if he makes it with a view to ex¬ 
changing it for money or other products of labor, 
then its exchangeability will depend on the intel¬ 
ligence, the skill, and the taste with which it is 
made. It is not simply the amount of muscular 
exertion expended in making it that determines its 
value ; it is its fitness to satisfy the desires of those 
to whom he will offer it in exchange. A workman 
with great intelligence, skill, and taste will produce 
articles that will gratify the desires of many, and 
he will have no difficulty in exchanging them on 
very favorable terms for money, or for the products 
of other workers. A workman with little intelli¬ 
gence, skill, and taste will produce articles that 
nobody will want, and will find it hard to exchange 
his products on any terms for those of other 
workers. It is plain, then, that it is intelligence, 
skill, and taste that give value to the products of 
labor, more than the merely mechanical or muscu¬ 
lar force by which they are produced. 

Let us suppose that one workman who possesses 
these intellectual qualities in an unusual degree 
finds another who lacks them, and enters into an 
arrangement with him. “ You work hard enough,” 
he says to his neighbor, “ and you are not a bad 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


13 5 


workman, but you do not seem to get on. You are 
always busy, but either you do not make the right 
kind of things, or else you do not make them at 
the rigjit time or in the right way, and nobody 
seems to want what you produce. Let me guide 
you. I will furnish you plans and patterns ; I will 
show you what to make and how to make it; work 
under my direction, and I will guarantee a product 
that will exchange for twice as much as you got 
for yours last year.” The bargain is made, and 
the promise is fulfilled ; the inefficient workman’s 
product is thus doubled. Is he justified, now, in 
claiming the whole of this product ? Can he truth¬ 
fully say that his labor is the cause of it all ? Is 
it not true that the intelligence, the skill, and the 
taste of the other workman have produced half of 
it ? And if the superior workman should take a 
part of this increased product for himself, and 
should leave the rest of it for the inferior work¬ 
man, thus largely increasing the inferior workman’s 
income, would there be any injustice in the opera¬ 
tion ? Would not the inferior workman have rea¬ 
son for gratitude rather than complaint ? 

Now, it is the sober fact, and no intelligent 
workingman will deny it, that a very large num¬ 
ber of those who labor with their hands lack the 
intelligence necessary for the best employment of 
their own powers ; and the product of their labor is 
greatly increased when they put themselves under 
the direction of some person of superior taste and 
judgment, and let him direct their industry. When 


136 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


they so labor the product is not wholly the fruit 
of their labor, it is largely the fruit of the intelli¬ 
gence by which their labor has been directed; and 
a part of it ought to be conceded as the just recom¬ 
pense of this directing intelligence. The working¬ 
man who does not frankly make this concession 
shows that there is something wrong either with 
his head or with his heart. 

There is still another aspect of the case of which 
it is necessary to speak. Let us suppose that, in 
the old days of the domestic system of manufacture, 
two weavers dwelt in adjoining cottages, plying 
their avocation. One of them, who was a good 
workman, spent in the market or at the alehouse 
every cent of his earnings, and devoted his leisure 
time to idleness or diversion. The other, who was 
equally skillful, saved a portion of his wages every 
week, and spent his leisure in study. By and by 
the active mind of this sober workman begins to 
exercise itself upon the problem of an improved 
loom, and in due season he has wrought it out; in 
his evenings and his holidays he has built it; and 
it proves, on trial, to have three times the speed of 
the old loom. Then he goes to his neighbor with 
this proposition: “ Put aside your old loom, and 
take my new one and weave for me. I have saved 
money enough to live on for a year, while I build 
more looms.” How much, now, should the hired 
weaver receive for his work ? He can weave with 
this improved loom three times as much cloth as 
he wove the year before. The earnings of this man 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


137 


with this machine are trebled. Is he entitled to 
the whole of this ? Has not the man who invented 
and built the loom a just claim upon a part of it ? 
The ingenuity that produced this machinery, and 
the frugality that enabled the owner to live without 
wages while the other man was using it, are not 
these entitled to some reward ? Suppose that the 
owner of the loom should give to the other half of 
what he was able to earn with the improved ma¬ 
chine ; would the other have any reason for com¬ 
plaint? His income would have been increased 
fifty per cent, by his new employer. For that in¬ 
crease, it seems to me, thanks, and not curses, 
would be due. 

Now, this ingenious workman, with his improved 
machine and his little hoard saved to live upon 
while he makes a new loom, is a capitalist employer. 
The loom and the little hoard are his capital. By 
means of this capital he employs his neighbor. 
The money earned is the joint production of the 
capital of the one and the labor of the other. This 
capital assists very efficiently in the work of pro¬ 
duction. It is entitled, I think, to a share of the 
product. And whenever any man, by legitimate 
industry and frugality and ingenuity and business 
capacity, is able to collect machinery and materials, 
and to organize the industry of his neighbors in 
such a way that the product of their labor is greatly 
increased, I am unable to see why he is not fairly 
entitled to a portion of the increased value thus 
produced. The theory that the workman has a 


138 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


right to the whole of it is irrational. It is only by 
accumulations of capital that labor can be organ¬ 
ized and made efficient. The frugality that saves 
the capital is an indispensable condition of the or¬ 
ganization of labor. To a part of the increased 
product resulting from the organization of labor 
the frugality that saves the capital is justly en¬ 
titled. 

I trust I have made it plain, even to the way¬ 
faring man, that the maxims of Smith and Ricardo 
are untrue, and that the conclusions derived from 
them by Karl Marx and the Socialists are unsound. 
Labor is not the sole cause of wealth, nor is it the 
only measure of value. That which gives value to 
objects is the desire of men to possess them. The 
value thus set upon them leads men to work to 
produce them. Men do not value things simply 
because they have worked to produce them; they 
work to produce them because they value them. 
The labor of men of inferior intelligence is made 
more productive when it is directed by men of 
superior intelligence, and part of the increased 
product belongs of right to the intelligence that 
caused it. The productive power of labor is also 
vastly increased by organization and by the use of 
machinery; and part of this gain is due to those 
who have saved the capital, without which this or¬ 
ganization could not be effected. 

So far, therefore, as the workingmen of this 
country have come to entertain the monstrous no¬ 
tion that their labor is the sole cause of the wealth 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


139 


of this country, and that they are defrauded of 
their rights if they do not possess the whole of it, 
they are under a most lamentable and dangerous 
delusion, and the sooner they get it out of their 
heads the better for them and for the whole coun¬ 
try. They do not all entertain this notion. A 
great many of them are quite too sensible to give 
place to such vagaries, even though the great names 
of Smith and Ricardo be summoned to give them 
currency. But these more reasonable workingmen, 
as I have said, are by no means satisfied with the 
existing state of things. “We are not,” say they, 
“ entitled to all the wealth produced; that is an 
extravagant idea. We know that the men who 
organize and manage the productive industries of 
the country are entitled to a liberal share of the 
wealth that they help to produce. But we think 
that the share which they are getting is too large. 
That is our grievance.” 

With this feeling I have already said that I 
sympathize. I doubt whether the wage-worker is 
getting his just proportion of the wealth he is 
helping to produce. In his efforts to improve his 
circumstances all men of good-will are his allies. 
It is essential to the welfare of the nation that the 
wage-workers receive their full share of the grow¬ 
ing wealth. They must go forward at an equal 
pace with all the rest of their fellow-citizens ; there 
must be no room in their minds for a just suspicion 
that they are being left behind. 

Nevertheless, it is well to understand that the 


140 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


natural limit to the improvement of their circum¬ 
stances is never very distant. No such radical 
change in their lot as some of them are looking 
for is possible. It often seems to be imagined by 
laborers who are, and who have a right to be, dis¬ 
contented with their condition, that if a more 
perfect equalization of the national income could 
be effected, the share of laborers might be very 
greatly increased. But the fact is that such an 
equalization would do far less for the working 
classes than they generally suppose. Many com¬ 
putations have been made ; I will not repeat them, 
because there is some question as to their ac¬ 
curacy ; but the largest estimate of the national 
income which I have seen would give, if it were 
distributed with absolute equality, only about fifty- 
seven cents a day to each person. The family of 
four woidd get two dollars and twenty cents a day. 
And this is certain, — that to add twenty-five 
cents a day to the portion of each one would re¬ 
quire an addition of $5,475,000,000 to the annual 
product of the nation. It must be evident to all, 
therefore, that the dreams of boundless luxury for 
everybody in which some workingmen are in the 
habit of indulging are not going to come true 
under any dispensation. And it is high time that 
a good many of them were thinking less about a 
great increase of wages, which in most cases is 
simply impossible, and more about making a wiser 
and more economical use of the wages they now re¬ 
ceive, which in many cases is altogether possible. 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 141 

Another fact is also worth bearing in mind by- 
wage-workers. The manufacturing industries of 
the country are now carried on under a system in 
which large numbers of workmen are grouped 
under one management. Under this system there 
is great gain of economy and efficiency 5 the sub¬ 
division of labor, the multiplication of machinery, 
greatly cheapen production. Under this system, 
also, the employer may give the workman the 
greater part of his earnings, and still make large 
gains himself. 

Here is a manufacturer who employs one thou¬ 
sand men. Let us suppose that the average net 
product of the labor of these men, after deducting 
the cost of raw materials and the expense of neces¬ 
sary repairs, is one dollar and sixty cents a day. 
The manufacturer pays his men an average wage 
of one dollar and fifty cents a day. By the aid of 
his capital he makes ten cents a day out of each 
man’s labor. That is the portion of the product 
that he takes as the wages of management and 
remuneration for the use of his capital. Probably 
a good many of the men are the gainers by this 
arrangement; they would not be able, if they were 
working on their own hook, to earn so much as 
he gives them. Yet his profit on the labor of one 
thousand men, at ten cents a day for each, is more 
than thirty thousand dollars a year. The arrange¬ 
ment is beneficial to the men, and it is highly 
profitable to the employer. I know not how such 
combinations as these can be prevented under a 


142 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


wage system of industry, nor do I see that it is 
desirable to prevent them. The man who has the 
organizing ability to bring a thousand workmen 
together and keep them steadily employed, cheaply 
and skillfully to procure the material for their 
labor, and successfully to dispose of the product 
of their labor, is entitled to a large reward for 
this difficult service. Such abilities will always 
command a high remuneration. And when such 
abilities are exerted, as they often are, with a con¬ 
scientious purpose to confer benefit on those em¬ 
ployed, the relation between employer and work¬ 
men may be not only amicable, but fraternal. 

Unhappily, this conscientious purpose is not al¬ 
ways manifest. The capitalist employer may be 
a philanthropist; he is too apt to be a man with 
whom “ business is business,” and labor simply a 
commodity, with which his only concern is to buy 
it in the cheapest market, and sell its product in 
the dearest. Under the management of such em¬ 
ployers, the large system of industry becomes a 
terrific engine of oppression. The division of la¬ 
bor, the multiplication of machinery, strip the 
individual workman of skill and versatility, and 
make the man the slave of the machine. Cut¬ 
throat competition among employers forces wages 
down to starvation figures, and then combination 
comes in to hold them down. Then the workmen 
begin to combine, and there is war. The employ¬ 
ing class and the wage-workers array themselves 
against each other as natural enemies; in their 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


143 


bitter conflicts, production is crippled, trade is 
paralyzed, and the peace and security of society 
are sorely disturbed. Thus we have come to the 
condition now confronting us,— the break-down of 
the competition system. 

It is, for many reasons, superfluous to consider 
what the fate of the working classes would be 
under a system of pure competition. Such a sys¬ 
tem we never had. The severities of its operation 
have always been tempered by justice and compas¬ 
sion. Some employers have always refused to 
take advantage of their working people and crowd 
down wages when the market was falling. But, 
for better or worse, that old competitive regime 
has lost its supremacy as the regulator of wages. 
Combination on both sides has, to a great extent, 
supplanted competition; and while the armies con¬ 
front each other, the world awaits with doubt and 
fear the issue of the combat. The end of it all 
will be, no doubt, some important modifications of 
the industrial system. 

But while the old order is changing to the new, 
it is of the utmost importance that these truths 
which we have been considering be kept before 
the people. That labor is not the sole cause of 
wealth ; that the most efficient production of 
wealth requires an intelligent and skillful organi¬ 
zation and direction of labor; that this intelli¬ 
gence and skill are causes of the production of 
wealth as truly as muscular power or manual dex¬ 
terity ; that the men who possess this organizing 


144 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


and directing ability will always command a large 
reward for their services ; and that the improve¬ 
ment in the laborer’s condition must be gradual, 
— these truths must not be forgotten. It will be 
salutary for the employing class to remember, also, 
that the cause which has brought them into their 
present straits, and has filled their future with ap¬ 
prehension, is the failure to mix with the competi¬ 
tive principle the proper moral correctives. Some 
measure of good-will has always been infused into 
these relations of employer and employed, but not 
enough. A fierce egoism has dragged the indus¬ 
trial world to the brink of chaos. The old com¬ 
petitive regime might have continued to exist 
indefinitely, if there had only been a general will¬ 
ingness to temper the severities of the economic 
law by the gentler motives of good-will. It is be¬ 
cause men supposed that loving ourselves was the 
law of business, and that loving our neighbors was 
only for Sundays and missionary contributions 
and charitable associations, that all this tempest 
has arisen, and the foundations of the industrial 
deep have been broken up. The want of a Chris¬ 
tian temper has brought us into this trouble ; and 
the cultivation of a Christian temper is the one 
thing needful to bring us out of it. It will be 
necessary, now, to make some change of methods, 
in order that a somewhat more equitable distribu¬ 
tion of the product of industry may be secured ; 
but the best methods will be of little avail unless 
there is a better spirit on the part of both employ- 


THE LABOR QUESTION. 


145 


ers and workmen. The important lesson for work¬ 
men and employers to learn is that they are very 
near neighbors. Having learned this lesson, they 
may well remember that there is one law which 
will bring order out of this chaos. It is not Ri¬ 
cardo’s law of wages, nor Malthus’s law of popula¬ 
tion, nor Marx’s law of surplus value; it is the 
simple, old-fashioned law, “ Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself.” 


VI. 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 

The Paradise predicted by the old economists 
as the result of the supreme and exclusive devotion 
of every man to his own interest seems to have 
been late in arriving; suspicions are now enter¬ 
tained in some quarters that it is a veritable 
Utopia. Those who believe that Christ’s law is 
the perfect law of society are not surprised that 
an industrial order resting on an explicit denial of 
Christ’s law should turn out to be industrial dis¬ 
order, — Pandemonium rather than Paradise. 

The regulative force of the system which is pass¬ 
ing is, or rather was, competition. As expounded 
by the early economists, this competitive system 
possessed a great deal of theoretical beauty; it was 
delightful to contemplate the peace and prosperity 
which it would surely evolve, if it were only let 
alone. But the competition of which all these 
blessed results were predicated is perfect competi¬ 
tion ; that is to say, a competition in which all 
the competitors are perfectly free and perfectly 
equal. In a society where each man clearly under¬ 
stood his own interest, and had the power to pursue 
it without let or hindrance, the economic results of 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 147 

competition might be beneficent. But in a society 
where there are vast differences in physical and in 
mental equipment, where the strong and the weak, 
the wise and the ignorant, the fierce and the timid, 
are all commingled, it is idle to talk of perfect 
competition. In its best estate, Professor Clark 
tells us, competition resembles a race; in its worst 
estate it is more like a battle. Now, though it may 
be true that the race is not always to the swift nor 
the battle to the strong, that accidental or provi¬ 
dential interferences may sometimes obstruct nat¬ 
ural forces, these are exceptions to the general 
rule; in the great majority of cases, as the proverb 
itself implies, the race is to the swift and the bat¬ 
tle to the strong. And whether competition be 
considered under its best aspect or its worst, it 
is plain that, with such inequalities as now exist 
among men, the slow will generally be distanced 
by the swift and the weak beaten and trampled 
by the strong. If the law is that each shall grasp 
all that he can get, regardless of the welfare of his 
neighbor, it is evident that some will get much, 
and that many will get nothing. 

“Competition,” says Dr. Walker, “to have the 
beneficent effects which have been ascribed to it, 
must be all-pervading and unremitting, like the 
pressure of the atmosphere, of which we are hap¬ 
pily unconscious because it is all the while equal 
within and without us, above and below us. Were 
that pressure to be made unequal, its effects would 
instantly become crushing and destructive. So it 


148 TOOLS AND THE MAN. 

is with competition: when it becomes unequal, 
when the ability of one industrial class to respond 
to the impulses of self-interest is seriously reduced 
by ignorance, poverty, or whatever cause, while 
the classes with which it is to divide the product 
of industry are active, alert, mobile in a high de¬ 
gree, the most mischievous effects may be experi¬ 
enced.” And again, after referring to those ter¬ 
rible injuries which the weaker classes often suffer 
through industrial disasters and depressions; to 
that physical and moral degradation into which 
whole populations are sometimes plunged, and out 
of which they can never rise without help from 
above themselves, the same strong writer goes on: 
“ Such disasters aside, the tendency of purely 
economical forces [the tendency of competition] 
is continually to aggravate the disadvantages 
from which any person or class may suffer. The 
fact of being worsted in one conflict is an ill pre¬ 
parative for another encounter. Every gain which 
one party makes at the expense of another furnishes 
the sinews of war for further aggressions; every 
loss which one person or class of persons sustains 
in the competitions of industry weakens the capa¬ 
city for future resistance. This principle applies 
with increasing force as men sink in the industrial 
scale.” 1 

This is the actual working of those economic 
laws which have been depended on to bring the 
millennium. When we leave the airy heights of 
1 The Wages Question , pp. 163-165, 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 149 

abstract economy and come down to actual life, 
this is what we find. If you want to know pre¬ 
cisely what sort of fruit unrestricted competition 
will bring forth, study the history of English labor 
during the first quarter of this century. That was 
a time when “the economic forces” held undis¬ 
puted sway. There were no laws to restrict free¬ 
dom of contract; there were no trades-unions, or, 
if any timidly ventured into being, they were ruth¬ 
lessly stamped out by the law; there was not much 
moral sentiment to restrain tyranny and extortion; 
supply and demand were the only regulative forces. 
That ought to have been a blessed season of peace 
and plenty for all. Was it so? For the capitalists 
it was; not for the laborers. Hear Mr. Thorold 
Rogers: “ Children and women were worked for 
long hours in the mill, and the Arkwrights and 
Peels and a multitude more built up colossal for¬ 
tunes on the misery of labor. . . . High profits 
were extracted from the labor of little children, 
and the race was stunted and starved, while mill- 
owners, land-owners, and stock-jobbers collected 
their millions from the toils of those whose wages 
they regulated and whose strength they ex¬ 
hausted.” 1 Men, working sixteen or eighteen 
hours a day, earned in those desperate times from 
a dollar and a quarter to a dollar and three 
quarters a week ; and the benumbing toil of little 
children brought their parents the merest pittance. 
About 1833, Mr. Hyndman tells us, “in good, 
well-managed factories around Manchester, the 
1 Work and Wages, p. 438. 


150 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


labor of children had been reduced to eleven hours 
a day, but in return the period for meals had been 
shortened; whilst in Scotland and the north of 
England, twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours were 
still the rule for children. The ordinary age for 
children to go to factories was now nine years, but 
there were still many of five, six, and seven years 
old working in all parts of England. Nor was 
this unmeasured abuse of child labor confined to 
the cotton, silk, or wool industries. It spread in 
every direction. The profit was so great that no¬ 
thing could stop its development. The report of 
1842 is crammed with statements of the fearful 
overwork of girls and boys in iron and coal mines, 
which doubtless had been going on from the end 
of the eighteenth century. Children, being small 
and handy, were particularly convenient for small 
veins of coal and pits where no great amount of 
capital was embarked; they could get along where 
horses and mules could not. Little girls were 
forced to carry heavy baskets of coal up high lad¬ 
ders, and little girls and boys dragged the coal- 
bunkers along, instead of animals. Women were 
commonly employed underground at the filthiest 
tasks. In the iron mines, children of four to nine 
years old were dragged out of bed at four or five 
o’clock in the morning to undergo sixteen hours’ 
work in the shafts, and if they faltered during 
their fearful labor were mercilessly flogged with 
leathern straps by the overseer.” 1 These are 
1 The Historical Basis of Socialism in England , pp. 155,156. 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 151 

simply transcripts from the English government 
reports, and they are hut part of a leaf out of vol¬ 
umes of horrors. It was to this that unrestricted 
competition brought the English laborer; and no 
economic force appeared for his deliverance, nor 
was there any sign of salvation coming to him 
from that quarter. 

You may see something very like this in the con¬ 
dition of the sewing women of our own cities at the 
present time. This portion of the labor market is 
now economically “ free.” There is no law limit¬ 
ing the employment of women or protecting them 
from the greed of their employers ; and there are 
no trades-unions, or none possessing much power, 
among these workers. The wages of sewing women 
are fixed by free contract; unrestricted competition 
rules in all this realm. The employers of these 
women are competing in the market for the sale of 
their goods. Each one is striving to undersell his 
competitors ; the margin is narrow; the cost of 
material does not greatly vary; the only way that 
the cost of production can be lowered is by redu¬ 
cing the wages of labor. The more unscrupulous 
and hard-hearted of the employers, therefore, force 
down the wages ; the rest are obliged to follow suit 
or lose the trade. Then the Shylocks give the 
screw another turn: what care they for the gaunt 
faces and the sunken eyes of the women by whose 
toil they seek to enrich themselves ? Are they not 
bidden to buy their labor in the cheapest market ? 
How can they tell when the minimum is reached? 


152 


TOOLS AND TIlN MAN. 


They can tell only by experiment. As long as 
wages will go down, they will crowd them down. 
When these women are dead, others will be ready 
to sell their lives at the same price, — perhaps at a 
lower price. If they are driven to sell something 
dearer than life, what of that? Has ethics any¬ 
thing to do with economics ? Thus it comes about 

— it is the logical consequence, the inevitable law 

— that the most rapacious employers fix the price 
of labor. When there is neither law, nor associa¬ 
tion of laborers, nor effective moral force to hold 
the “ economic forces ” in check, they always oper¬ 
ate in this manner. Humane employers have no¬ 
thing to say about the price of labor; if they do 
not follow the lead of the extortionists, they will 
be beaten in the competition and driven from the 
field. Women’s wages in the productive industries 
are fixed by unrestricted competition, and they are 
quite generally starvation wages. 

The same law operates in other departments. 
Listen to Mr. James Means, a shoe manufacturer 
of Massachusetts, talking to his men. He has been 
describing a season of good times and a subsequent 
gradual tightening of the market. “ After a while, 
some fair-minded employers found out that some 
of their competitors were selling their products in 
the market just a little cheaper than they could 
possibly afford to sell. Those employers set about 
finding out the reason why those competitors were 
underselling them. What did they find? They 
found that some other employers, who were not fair- 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 153 


minded, had been cutting down the price of their 
labor, and thus, by reducing the price of their 
goods, were able to get away the trade from them. 
What could the fair-minded employers do about it? 
There were only two courses open to them. One 
was to close up their places of business and let 
their trade go away from them to those employers 
who had cut down their labor; the other was to 
cut down their pay-rolls to correspond with those 
of the employers who were grinding their em¬ 
ployees. Were the fair-minded ones guilty of 
avarice? Not at all. They were perfectly help¬ 
less. . . . No matter how liberal-minded an em¬ 
ployer may be, he cannot raise wages, because he 
has to sell his goods in competition with other 
employers who are crowding wages down. Those 
who are grinding their men can undersell him 
every time, and he must lose his business or cut 
down his pay-roll.” 

Such is the actual outcome of the unhindered 
working of the principle of competition. It re¬ 
sults, no doubt, in a great cheapening of commodi¬ 
ties, and in an equal cheapening of human life and 
human virtue; in the destruction of the weak, in 
the degradation of the ignorant, in the practical 
enslavement of the poor. True it is, as Professor 
Clark has said, that competition wholly without 
moral restraint has never existed. “If competi¬ 
tion were supreme, it would be supremely unmoral; 
if it existed otherwise than by sufferance, it would 
be a demon. Nothing could be wilder or fiercer 


154 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


than an unrestricted struggle of millions of men 
for gain, and nothing more irrational than to pre¬ 
sent such a struggle as a scientific ideal.” 1 But 
though, in spite of the theories of the individual¬ 
istic economists, moral forces have interposed to 
check, to some extent, the savagery of this struggle, 
yet these moral influences have been so feeble, and 
those who sought to wield them have so often stood 
abashed in the presence of that false science which 
sought to banish them from the industrial domain, 
that their work has been ineffectually done; and 
the demon of individualism has had free range in 
society, with such consequences as we have seen. 

Not laborers alone, but employers and capitalists 
as well, have found that competition, in the present 
state of human nature, is not an unmixed good. 
Not only does it crowd wages below the limit of 
subsistence; it also devours profits. Often by the 
fierceness of competition the gains of business are 
reduced to zero, and traders and manufacturers are 
forced to combine to save themselves from ruin. 
Combinations of capital are generally made for 
this purpose; it is not so much against the insur¬ 
rection of labor that capital seeks to protect itself 
as against the foes of its own household. But 
when these combinations of employers are once 
made, they are found convenient in resisting the 
demands for higher wages, or in forcing reductions 
when the market is falling. 

Such greedy and conscienceless reductions of 
1 The Philosophy of Wealth , p. 219. 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 155 


wages as those which I have described lead neces¬ 
sarily to combinations of labor. It is the only 
thing that the wage-workers can do. If they suffer 
without resistance the operation of the economic 
forces, they will be degraded and destroyed; if 
they stand together for mutual protection, they 
may be saved. That brave and wise Massachusetts 
employer whose words to his men I have quoted 
sees this clearly. “ You see,” he says, “ that the 
remedy cannot come from the employers; therefore, 
I say, it must come from those employed; therefore, 
I declare that the remedy must come from the or¬ 
ganization of labor in trades-unions, for labor must 
be its own champion and right its own wrongs, and 
labor must combine and see to it that its power 
to purchase its own products is not taken away 
from it.” 

One of the largest employers of labor in my 
own city, Mr. Charles Lindenberg, thus expresses 
himself: — 

“ The employer, who in many cases is disposed 
to divide more justly with labor, is handicapped 
by competition. If I divide half of my profits 
with my employees, then my competitor can un¬ 
dersell me to this extent and make as much money 
as I do. While there may not be as much force 
in this objection as appears on the surface, yet the 
objection is an influential one in these times of 
sharp competition and narrow margins. To place 
all upon the same level and to overcome the gen¬ 
eral cupidity, the employer must be aided in his 


156 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


desire to do justice to the laborer by a more potent 
force than public opinion. Government, con¬ 
trolled by political parties, does not supply this 
power. The laborers themselves must create it 
by well-directed mutual effort, by combination 
within the law.” 

If all employers were like these two, there 
would be no serious labor question. The justice 
of their conclusions cannot be disputed. No dic¬ 
tate of prudence or of humanity is more obvious. 
In the absence of such combinations as they advo¬ 
cate, the fate of the wage-workers would be what 
it was in England sixty years ago, and what it is 
to-day among our working-women. If the wage 
system is to continue, labor must organize to save 
itself from extermination. 

As a matter of fact, organization has brought 
deliverance to the laborer. From that deep 
degradation into which unhindered competition 
plunged the English laboring classes they have 
lifted themselves by combination. Not altogether 
without the aid of others have they wrought out 
this deliverance. The acts of Parliament, permit¬ 
ting and encouraging them to combine for their 
own protection, and all those bright chapters of 
factory legislation designed for their protection, 
were in large measure the work of men in other 
callings, who remembered the wage-slave in his 
bonds of penury as bound with him, and stooped 
to loose his chains. It was thus by the interven¬ 
tion of moral forces that succor was first brought 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 157 


to him. Armed with the right of combination, 
the English laborer has steadily regained the 
ground which he had lost, and his condition to-day 
is vastly better than it was fifty years ago. As 
a testimony respecting the effect of this method 
upon the welfare of the English laborer, let me 
quote a few sentences from the most eminent au¬ 
thority upon this subject, Mr. Thorold Rogers: — 

“ Three processes have been adopted by the 
working classes, each of which has had a vast, and 
should have an increasing influence in bettering 
the condition of labor. . . . They should be viewed 
by statesmen with unqualified favor, and be treated 
by workingmen as the instruments by which they 
can regain and consolidate the best interests of 
labor. They are : trade-unionism, or, as I prefer to 
call it, labor partnership ; cooperation, or the com¬ 
bination in the same individuals of the functions 
of labor and capital; and benefit associations, or 
the machinery of a mutual assurance society. So 
important do I conceive these aids to the material, 
intellectual, and moral elevation of the working 
classes to be that I would, even at the risk of be¬ 
ing thought reactionary, limit the privileges of cit¬ 
izenship, the franchise, parliamentary and local, to 
those, and those only, who entered into these three 
guilds, — the guild of labor, the guild of produc¬ 
tion and trade, and the guild of mutual help.” 1 

Such testimony from an aristocrat, a Member of 
Parliament, and a Professor of Economic Science 
1 Work and Wages , p. 440. 


158 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


in Oxford University, should be entitled to some 
weight. “ When the working classes combine for 
the protection of their own labor against the effects 
of unrestrained competition, they are simply tak¬ 
ing that course which is recommended alike by 
reason and experience.” 1 So says the Duke of 
Argyll, one of the greatest of British aristocrats 
and landlords. 

Thus it is that combination has been gradually 
supplanting competition. The hardships arising 
under unchecked competition became intolerable ; 
capitalists on their side and workmen on theirs 
have been driven to combine for mutual protection. 
The great railroad companies, the great manufac¬ 
turing interests, compete but imperfectly; they 
seek to combine. The workmen of most trades 
are organized in trades-unions; the unions are 
seeking an industrial federation; the Knights of 
Labor are ambitious to include and represent them 
all. What competition might do if it were free 
is now a question of speculative interest mainly; 
the question of the hour is rather what combina¬ 
tion will do. To the philanthropic observer it 
sometimes appears that the strengthening of these 
organizations, on both sides, bodes no good to so¬ 
ciety. It looks like the realization in sociology of 
the physical paradox, — the collision of an irresist¬ 
ible force with an immovable body. But perhaps 
the result may be similar to that which science 
bids fair to achieve in naval warfare, when it seeks 
i The Reign of Law, p. 373. 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 159 

to construct guns that will pierce any armor, and 
armor that will resist any projectile. Under such 
circumstances naval warfare becomes impossible 
and absurd; we are forced to substitute reason 
and persuasion for steel and gunpowder. And 
it may be that the strengthening of the combina¬ 
tions of labor and capital for their conflict with 
each other will, in the same way, put an end to 
conflict. In the words of Professor Clark : — 

“ As the growth of a great corporation, absorb¬ 
ing all small establishments in a locality, suppresses 
competition among employers, the growth of a well- 
organized trades-union suppresses it among work¬ 
men. If both processes were consummated, and 
one corporation produced the entire supply of a 
particular article, while a trades-union controlled 
the entire labor force available for its production, 
actual competition would be at an end, and the 
division of the product would be affected by a 
bargaining process untempered by any of the con¬ 
servative influences by which, in an open market, 
contracts are actually made. There would be no 
alternative buyers and sellers ; the laborers would 
be compelled to sell their share of the product to 
the one corporate employer, and that employer 
would be compelled to buy the product of the 
trades-union, which, in a sense, is a single corpo¬ 
rate laborer. The adjustment, if left to be effected 
by crude force, would produce disturbances too dis¬ 
astrous to be tolerated, and arbitration on a com¬ 
prehensive scale would be a prime necessity. This 


160 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


condition is, as yet, only approximated. The soli¬ 
darity of labor and capital is very incomplete. Cor¬ 
porations have not become absolute monopolies in 
their respective fields ; trades-unions do not include 
all workmen. The bargaining process between capi¬ 
tal and labor is not the blind and desperate strug¬ 
gle that it might be. It is tending toward that 
condition, and becoming, in a corresponding degree, 
dependent on arbitration.” 1 

The statistics of strikes and lockouts collected 
by the National Labor Bureau showed that in the 
seven years from 1881 to 1886 there were, in the 
United States, 3,902 strikes, involving 22,304 estab¬ 
lishments. The number of employees striking and 
involved was 1,323,203. Of lockouts during the 
same period, there were 2,214, and of employees 
locked out, 160,823. The loss to the men for this 
period of seven years was about $60,000,000, and 
to employers about $35,000,000. Of the strikes, 
a little more than 60 per cent, were wholly or partly 
successful, and a little less than 40 per cent, failed 
of their object. In England, the losses from strikes 
and lockouts for a term of ten years averaged about 
the same figure as in this country, — something 
like $15,000,000 a year. The pecuniary damage is 
serious; but the moral injury is far greater. It 
would seem that some remedy for these devasta¬ 
tions ought to be found in Christian civilization. 

The industrial revolution through which we have 
been passing may be roughly sketched and charac¬ 
terized in a few words : — 

1 The Philosophy of Wealth, pp. 136, 137. 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION . 161 

1. The division of labor and the increase of ma¬ 
chinery require, for the most efficient production, 
the large system of industry, with great aggrega¬ 
tions of capital. 

2. Under this system there is a tendency to the 
spoliation and degradation of the wage laborer. 

3. To resist this tendency, labor combines, and 
ought to combine. Such combinations of labor may 
be abused ; the men belonging to them may make 
gross blunders and unjust exactions ; they are very 
likely to do so. Nevertheless, the organization of 
labor is necessary, under a wage system, to the 
preservation of the laboring class and to the wel¬ 
fare of society. 

4. The right to belong to such an organization 
and the right to refuse to join it are equally sacred 
and inalienable. The employer who refuses to 
employ men because they belong to a trades-union, 
and the workmen who seek to prevent men from 
procuring employment because they do not belong 
to a trades-union, are equally unjust and equally 
tyrannical. 

5. Such combinations of labor involve the right 
to strike for the increase or against the reduction 
of wages, or to secure any reasonable amelioration 
in the conditions of labor. If the employer or the 
company has the right to refuse to pay more than 
a certain wage, the employees have a right, individ¬ 
ually or collectively, to refuse to work for less than 
a certain wage. The right to strike involves, how¬ 
ever, no right on the part of the strikers to use vio- 


162 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


lence toward their employer or their fellow-work¬ 
men who will not join them. 

6. Strikes and lockouts are, however, methods 
of coercion, and ought to he the last resort. The 
employer who locks out his workmen because they 
will not take the reduced wage that he offers, and 
the workmen who strike because their employer 
will not give the increased wage that they demand, 
are both endeavoring to carry their point by in¬ 
flicting injury upon their adversary. This involves 
the suffering of injury themselves; the question 
simply is, which can the longer endure the hard¬ 
ship. A most unsocial proceeding, assuredly : rea¬ 
son has no part in it; it is the essence of unreason. 

7. The final function of these combinations 
must therefore be, not war, but arbitration. Arbi¬ 
tration can never take place until the workmen 
have learned to stand together ; and it will never 
be admitted by the employers until these bands 
of workmen have shown themselves formidable. 
Strong combinations on the side of labor are the 
necessary conditions of arbitration. Capital will 
not arbitrate with a foe that it can crush. But 
when the antagonists are fairly matched, and it is 
evident that conflict can never take place without 
disaster to both, the voice of reason is more likely 
to be heard. 

Arbitration is, then, the final term of the wage 
system. Unrestricted competition has practically 
broken down; combination for fighting purposes 
is simple brutishness, and cannot endure ; the appeal 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITLON. 163 


to reason is the last resort. Is it possible to settle 
these labor disputes by this method ? Can these 
great organized forces of capital and labor, now 
arrayed against each other, learn to confer on 
friendly terms and adjust their differences ? 

The first condition of successful arbitration is an 
unreserved and ungrudging admission on the part of 
employers of the right of the men to combine, and 
a clear recognition of the fact that the men stand 
upon an equal footing with themselves in the whole 
negotiation. It is very hard for many employers 
to recognize this right of the laborers to combine. 
The fact that these combinations of laborers often 
misuse their power ; that they make unreasonable 
and injurious demands, and strike for foolish rea¬ 
sons, and sometimes resort to violence, is not to be 
denied. But if the abuse of privilege is a reason 
for the refusal of privilege, the right of capital 
to combine might, I think, be seriously questioned. 
Have we never heard of companies and corpora¬ 
tions using their power selfishly and tyrannically ? 
Even on the score of violence and turbulent law¬ 
lessness, it is by no means clear that the corpora¬ 
tions and the capitalists are not as great sinners as 
the labor organizations. In two papers lying on 
my table while I was writing this page were illus¬ 
trative items. The first was headed, “ A Bloody 
Battle Fought in Pennsylvania over the Possession 
of a Mine.” Two companies claimed possession of 
a mine ; each armed its retainers, and, in the words 
of the dispatch, “ a regular pitched battle was the 


164 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


result, during which a man named Sterling was 
severely beaten over the head, and probably fatally 
injured. Several others on both sides were badly 
hurt by the thrown stones.” The second item, 
in the same day’s paper, of the murder of a boy by 
the Pinkerton men at Jersey City, adds another to 
the list of such homicides for which capital is re¬ 
sponsible. Where is the great railroad corporation 
that has not, at one time or another, resorted to 
violence in the assertion of its claims ? Not long 
ago, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company 
and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company fought a 
battle, within the corporation of my own city, for 
the possession of a railroad track. Nobody was 
killed, I believe, but that was good luck rather than 
good-will. The cutting of telegraph wires, the tear¬ 
ing up of railroad tracks, and all such offenses 
against property, — are they not of very frequent 
occurrence ? And, aside from this resort to brute 
force, the gigantic lawlessness of corporations in 
their nefarious assaults upon the very foundations 
of government; in the bribing of courts and leg¬ 
islators and councilmen; in the robbery, by the 
forms of law, of thousands of innocent investors; 
in the wrecking, by corrupt and even felonious 
methods, of great properties, — is not all this a too 
familiar tale? Yet it is the representatives of 
these great organizations of capital who think that 
labor ought not to be permitted to organize, because 
its organizations sometimes behave in a disorderly 
and lawless manner! 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 165 

“ An examination of our social history,” says 
Professor Ely, “ reveals the fact that the laborers 
have been guilty of no offense for which they could 
not find a precedent in the conduct of unscrupu¬ 
lous employers. ... I myself have seen the prop¬ 
erty of one railway corporation seized by another 
without the slightest ground in right or justice, 
and it was so common and every-day an occurrence 
that it attracted little attention. I am not aware 
that in all the United States a single editor thought 
it worth while to publish an editorial about it.” 1 
And Professor Thorold Rogers bears his testimony 
also in stinging words : “ The violence which has 
characterized the action of workingmen against 
those who abstain from their policy, compete 
against them for employment in a crisis, and, as 
they believe, selfishly profit by a process which 
they are too mean to assist, but from which they 
reap no small advantage, is indefensible and sui¬ 
cidal. But it has its parallel in the attitude of 
joint stock companies to interlopers, and in the 
devices by which traders have over and over again 
striven to ruin rivals who will not abide by trade 
customs, or even seek to be independent competitors 
against powerful agencies. I see no difference, be¬ 
yond the fact that law allows them, between the 
rattening of a Sheffield saw-grinder and the expe¬ 
dients by which, in the committee rooms of the 
House of Commons, railway directors seek to extin¬ 
guish competition schemes. Men who have not 
1 The Labor Movement in America , pp. 164,165. 


166 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


had the refinements of education, and who are not 
practiced in the arts of polite malignity, may be 
coarse and rude in the expedients which they adopt; 
but when the process is essentially the same, when 
the motive is practically identical, and the result is 
precisely equal, the manner is of no importance to 
the analyst of motives and conduct.” 1 

If the abuse of power should forbid the organi¬ 
zation of labor, much more should it forbid the or¬ 
ganization of capital. And the real purposes which 
the workingmen seek to realize through their or¬ 
ganizations are certainly quite as lawful and quite 
as useful to society at large as those which the cap¬ 
italists seek to realize through their organizations. 

It must be expected that labor organizations 
will sometimes make grave mistakes and impossible 
demands. Whenever they do, they must inevitably 
suffer the consequences of their rashness. It is only 
by this experience of suffering that they will learn 
wisdom. But they will be much less likely to rush 
into these passionate extravagances if their right 
of organization is fully conceded by their employers. 
I think that fully half of the trouble now existing 
between employers and workingmen arises from 
the refusal of employers to make this concession. 
The workingman regards this refusal as the denial 
of one of his most sacred rights, and I agree with 
him. When all the captains of industry are ready 
to take the position of Mr. James Means and Mr. 
Charles Lindenberg, as quoted above, there will be 
1 'Work and Wages , pp. 403, 404. 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 167 

fewer troubles to arbitrate, and a much better pros¬ 
pect of successful arbitration. 

Not only must the employers recognize the work¬ 
man’s right to combine ; they must recognize his 
perfect equality with themselves in the discussion 
of wages. “ My men shall not dictate to me what 
wages I shall pay,” says the employer. Certainly 
not. Arbitration is not dictation. And neither 
shall you, therefore, dictate to your men what 
wages they shall receive. The notion “ that the 
'employer is the superior, the employee an inferior; 
that it is the right of the former to determine, the 
duty of the latter to acquiesce,” is, as Mr. Joseph 
D. Weeks has said, the cause of much friction. 
The employer, Mr. W eeks continues, often “ re¬ 
fuses to discuss questions that arise in connection 
with wages or the details of employment, in the 
discussion of which the employee has an interest 
equally with the employer; or, if such discussions 
take place, they are ‘ permitted,’ an interview is 
‘ granted.’ . . . The true relation of employer and 
employed is that of independent equals, uniting 
their efforts to a given end, each with the power, 
within certain limits, to determine his own rights, 
but not to prescribe the duties of the others.” 1 
This fact must be fully admitted before arbitration 
can bring forth its good fruits. 

These methods of arbitration are applied to the 
prevention as well as the settlement of labor dis¬ 
putes. There are committees of conciliation, to 
1 Labor Differences and their Settlement , p. 10. 


168 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


whom questions threatening conflict are referred, 
and by whom the difficulties are often composed 
before the open rupture occurs. There are also 
boards of arbitration, to which appeal is made for 
the decision of irreconcilable differences. I cannot 
here go into the history of these peaceful methods 
by which in France for almost a century, and in 
England for many years, the disputes of employers 
and employees have been obviated or healed, to the 
vast advantage of both parties. When it is asked 
whether arbitration is practicable, the verdict of * 
experience is clear and emphatic. In France and 
Belgium the work is done by legal tribunals; in 
England voluntary arbitration has been the rule, 
and three of the great industries of that country, 
the hosiery trade, the manufactured-iron trade, and 
the coal mining in the northern districts, have been 
preserved for many years from serious difficulties. 

What, now, is the precise question to be sub¬ 
mitted, in each case, to arbitration ? Let us sup¬ 
pose that a strike has occurred, and that the em¬ 
ployers and the workingmen have agreed to submit 
the matter in dispute to arbitration. What is the 
matter in dispute? What question must these 
arbitrators answer? It is simply the question, 
“What is right and fair?” What wages ought 
this employer to pay his men? What profit ought 
these men to allow the employer on his capital, and 
what reward is he entitled to for his management 
of the business ? It is right and fair for the em¬ 
ployer to pay his men what he can afford to pay 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 169 


them, after reserving to himself a reasonable re¬ 
ward for his skill, his business experience, and the 
abstinence which has enabled him to accumulate 
his capital. It is not right and fair that he should 
be growing rich very rapidly by means of their 
labor, while they are living in penury. On the 
other hand, it is not right and fair that he should 
pay them a rate of wages which will deprive him 
of profits, or cripple the business, or leave him 
without adequate motive to undertake the labors, 
the risks, and the pinching economies that are in¬ 
volved in the accumulation of capital and the or¬ 
ganization of labor. Thus the question before the 
arbitrators is always a question of justice. If they 
ask what the employer can alford to pay, and what 
the workingman can afford to take, the standard 
by which they must judge is a standard of reason 
or equity. It may be difficult to fix the standard; 
in many cases it surely will be; but that must be 
their endeavor. It is not a question for force to 
determine, for force has been laid aside. It is not 
what each can get, but what each ought to get. 
The whole controversy has been removed from the 
realm of natural law and physical force into the 
moral realm. This is precisely what arbitration 
signifies. It is the substitution of moral law for 
physical law in the distribution of the product of 
industry. It is an attempt to moralize the rela¬ 
tions of capital and labor. Natural impulse has 
hitherto been relied upon to effect a proper distri¬ 
bution of wealth, and it has failed, not because 


170 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


it was too weak, but because it was too strong 
through the flesh; reason and judgment have been 
called in to take its place. Is not this a significant 
event in the history of civilization? 

“This method,” says Mr. Weeks, “takes cogni¬ 
zance of existing conditions; recognizes the perfect 
equality of employer and employed; commits the 
prevention and settlement of these differences to 
the reason and judgment of both, not to the selfish 
impulses of one; refuses to recognize force; does 
away with the necessity and excuse for strikes and 
lockouts; permits due weight to be given to eco¬ 
nomical forces, and due consideration to any action 
their presence and power demand; furnishes the 
nearest approach to a free open labor market that 
has yet been established; in a word, it meets better 
than any method yet proposed the conditions ne¬ 
cessary to a satisfactory and intelligent discussion 
and settlement of these questions, and offers far 
greater security that justice will be done and 
equality and peace established than does any 
method that relies upon blind, unreasoning, undis¬ 
criminating law or force.” 1 

Will the moral forces be found adequate to reg¬ 
ulate this vast domain, so full of greed and deceit 
and violence? Will grasping employers on the 
one hand, and rude and turbulent workingmen on 
the other, submit to the rule of reason and justice ? 
That there is reason for doubt and fear I do not 
conceal from myself, but there is also some reason 
1 Labor Differences and their Settlement, p. 38. 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 


171 


for hope. If we could only prevail upon these 
contending parties to try this way, they would 
surely find it more excellent. The effect of right¬ 
eousness is peace. The moral forces will certainly 
rule more benignly than the unmoral forces. Men 
will submit to reason and justice more willingly 
than to power. And the result of arbitration when 
it has been fairly tried encourages us to look for 
greatly improved relations between the contending 
parties through the operation of this method. In 
the present juncture, with the forces gathering, and 
the battle-cries resounding, and the peace of society 
threatened by reasonless collisions between masters 
and men, it is the one word that should be most 
earnestly spoken. Every man who has a voice 
should urge it. The folly, the stupidity, the bru¬ 
tishness of trying to settle the disputes that arise 
in the division of the product of labor by strikes or 
lockouts, by industrial war with its wasting and 
destruction and violence, ought to be condemned 
by every humane and order-loving man. Tell 
these quarreling factions that they must not fight. 
Make them feel that the resort to coercion is a 
crime that will bring down upon them the repro¬ 
bation of all just men; that they must learn how 
to settle their differences by reason; that the party 
which first offers to arbitrate gains by that act the 
sympathy of the public; that the party which re¬ 
fuses arbitration, or will not abide by a fair award, 
puts itself under the ban of civilized society. 

“ Arbitration,” says Professor E. J. James, “.has 


172 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


the great advantage of subjecting the acts of the 
parties to it to the efficient and powerful control 
of an energetic public opinion. It recognizes in¬ 
directly what is too often overlooked, that the 
interests at stake are not merely those of the la¬ 
borer and employer, but also those of the commu¬ 
nity at large. The latter has such a great stake in 
the contest that it cannot afford to stand idly by 
and permit the former to disturb society to its 
foundations, and destroy in their struggle the very 
conditions of sound economic progress.” 1 This is 
the truth which we must emphasize. We must 
make this industrial dueling as infamous as the 
other sort of dueling now is in civilized society. 
We must create a public opinion which shall 
scourge with its censure the kindling of strife that 
cripples industry, breeds pauperism, and scatters 
broadcast the seeds of enmity and scorn. 

It is evident that for the present, and for the 
immediate future, arbitration of labor disputes is 
the one practicable measure, and that its effective¬ 
ness depends largely on the generation of a public 
sentiment that shall demand it, and watch its oper¬ 
ations, and give emphasis and applause to its just 
decisions. The general prevalence of it, as Pro¬ 
fessor Clark has said, “would mean a reign of law, 
rather than of force, and would mark an era in 
the moral evolution of society.” 2 - A reign of law 
rather than of force society has a right to require 
of these contending parties; and it is a good omen 

1 The Labor Problem , p. 65. 

2 The Philosophy of Wealth, p. 177. 


THE COLLAPSE OF COMPETITION. 173 

that so many voices are heard from the ranks of 
labor and from the captains of industry responding 
heartily to this demand. “ Down with the red 
flag! ” cries a journeyman printer in Milwaukee. 
“ When nations can settle their difficulties by arbi¬ 
tration, why cannot capital and labor do likewise? ” 
“ I am confident,” writes an iron manufacturer of 
Wheeling, “ that could the parties connected with 
our nail-mills have had a board of arbitration, or 
even a conference committee, or any method of 
bringing the moderate and conservative men of 
both sides together, a settlement could have been 
reached; saving the immense loss of wages, keeping 
the busy wheels of mills in operation, avoiding 
scenes of riot, maintaining the peace, giving food 
and comfort to many families that have been de¬ 
prived of it, and keeping many a good man from 
intemperance and vice, the sequences of idleness.” 
“Without reason there is no arbitration,” writes 
the secretary of a miners’ union, “ and arbitra¬ 
tion means a stop to those prolonged and ruinous 
struggles between employers and employees, a strik¬ 
ing of hands across the bloody chasm. Arbitration 
proper is the missing link between capital and la¬ 
bor.” How earnestly Mr. Powderly has preached 
the gospel of arbitration I do not need to tell. 

With such witnesses testifying on every hand, 
and such harmonious tongues singing the praises 
of arbitration, we will trust that upon many, in 
our generation, is about to fall the blessing of the 
peacemakers. 


VII. 


COOPERATION THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 

“ Society may be established and exist perma¬ 
nently,” says Dr. Mark Hopkins, “ on two princi¬ 
ples, that of competition and that of cooperation. 
The first has its advantages, and the evils of it are 
diminished as general intelligence is increased. 
Under it the evils of ignorance are felt pecuniarily, 
and intelligence is thus stimulated. . . . But the 
principle of cooperation is far higher, and its re¬ 
sults would be better.” 

Dr. Hopkins is speaking here, not as a political 
economist, but as a moral philosopher. The co¬ 
operation to which he refers is not a method of 
industry, but a principle of social life. He says 
that while certain personal advantages may be 
gained by competing with our fellow-men for the 
prizes of life, it would be better if we would co¬ 
operate with them for mutual benefit. 

It has generally been assumed by economists that 
competition is the only effective principle of human 
association ; that men were made to compete; that 
competition is their normal relation; that the well¬ 
being of society depends upon this incessant con¬ 
test, in which each one is striving to get a larger 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 


175 


portion than his neighbor of the good things of 
this life. 

Now we may admit, with Dr. Hopkins, that this 
principle of competition has its advantages. It 
makes men keen and strenuous; it sharpens their 
wits; it strengthens their wills; it develops their 
individuality. And we may also admit that any 
form of society from which the operation of this 
principle, or some form of this principle, was wholly 
excluded would be likely to fail in developing the 
self-respect and self-reliance which are essential to 
all high character. Yet I cannot quite agree with 
the statement that society may exist permanently 
on the basis of competition. We found some 
reasons, in the last chapter, for believing that a 
society in which the relations of men were all com¬ 
petitive would not be society at all. Strife and war¬ 
fare would be constant. Every man’s hand would 
be against his neighbor. Such a society never ex¬ 
isted. There has always been a great deal of com¬ 
petition in the world, but there has always been 
some good measure of cooperation, also. Men have 
been striving with one another for certain ends, and 
they have also been combining with one another 
for certain ends; their contests divided them, but 
their mutual interests united them ; the repulsions 
of self-interest have been balanced, and often over¬ 
balanced, by the attractions of sympathy and good¬ 
will. Men compete in their business relations; on 
the streets, their rivalries, even if honest and fair, 
are sharp and incessant; each is trying to get the 


176 


TOOLS AND THE MAN . 


lion’s share. But they come together in the neigh¬ 
borhood, in the school, in the church, in the secret 
fraternity, in the literary or musical society, in the 
political party, and in other associations where 
their interests are no longer divergent, but common, 
where the good of each is seen to be the good of 
all, where they find their profit in combining; and 
thus they learn to think of one another and to care 
for one another, and the social sentiments and ac¬ 
tivities are healthily developed. The cooperative 
principle and habit is really the cement of society: 
competition develops individual powers ; coopera¬ 
tion develops social relations. As society advances 
from barbarism to civilization, men compete less 
and cooperate more. The principle of competition 
is the law of the survival of the fittest; it is the 
law of plants and brutes and brutish men; but it 
is not the highest law of civilized society; another 
and higher principle, the principle of good-will, the 
principle of mutual help, begins at length to oper¬ 
ate. The struggle for existence, as Mr. Fiske says, 
must go on in the lower regions of organic life; 
“ but as a determining factor in the highest work 
of evolution, it will disappear ” with the progress 
of the race. 

This is precisely the end at which Christianity 
aims. Its work in society may be summed up 
largely in this statement: it seeks to strengthen 
the principle of cooperation among men, and to 
hold in check the principle of competition. “ The 
Master,” says the great expounder of evolution, 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 177 

“ knew full well that the time was not yet ripe, — 
that he brought not peace, but a sword. But he 
preached that gospel of great joy which is by and 
by to be realized by toiling humanity ; and he 
announced ethical principles fit for the time that 
is to come.” 1 

If, then, in Christian lands, cooperation is gain¬ 
ing upon competition; if, as the years go by, men 
strive less and combine more, this is a proof that 
Christ is a true prophet and a wise law-giver. 
Every movement in this direction is a sign of the 
coming of his kingdom. To my own mind, the con¬ 
clusive evidences of the truth of Christianity are 
found in the social movements of the world about 
me. I know that Christ is king of men, that his 
kingdom is the kingdom of the truth, because I see 
that he has laid down laws to which men must con¬ 
form in every relation of life if they would be 
happy and prosperous and free. To make plain 
this truth to men, to show them that Christ is 
actually establishing his kingdom in this world, is 
one way — it seems to me a very effective way — 
of preaching Christ. Yet there are persons who 
will listen to such a presentation, and then lament 
that Christ is not preached. A man who had 
never seen any light save one feeble ra}^ that came 
through a keyhole into the dungeon where he was 
confined might lament, if you took him out of 
doors at noonday, because you had deprived him 
of his vision of the light. So a man who knows 
1 The Destiny of Man, p. 106. 


178 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


nothing of Christ except the glimmering beams of 
his beauty that find their way through the cracks 
and orifices of some theological system may feel 
himself bereft if you show him the Light of the 
World, shining with noonday splendor all over the 
field of modern history. But men who are in the 
habit of living out of doors can hardly be expected 
to adjust their vision to the optical infirmities of 
theological troglodytes. 

Let us see, then, whether we can express in 
familiar and untechnical terms the message of 
Christianity to the men of to-day. What is the 
authoritative word of this Master to employers and 
employed ? 

1. Its first clear utterance is aptly conveyed in 
the terms of that remonstrance spoken by the great 
law-giver of Israel to the two Hebrews whom he 
found fighting : “ Sirs, ye are brethren ; why do ye 
wrong one to another ? ” That employers and work¬ 
men are members of one family, vitally and indis¬ 
solubly bound together, and that controversy and 
strife between them are not only injurious, but un¬ 
natural, is the fact which it emphasizes. The di¬ 
vine Fatherhood implies the human brotherhood, 
and the law of love covers all the relations of 
human life. Not merely to the church, but to the 
human race as well, does the apostle’s metaphor of 
the body apply, “Ye are members one of another.” 
And it would be just as rational for the right hand 
and the left hand to fly at each other, and beat and 
bruise each other till one or the other was disabled, 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 


179 


as it is for employer and employed to fall into con¬ 
tention and controversy. This great truth of the 
absolute unity of human interests, which involves 
the impossibility that any social class should rise 
by depressing another social class, which implies 
that if one member of the social organism suffers 
all the other members must suffer with it, is the 
corner-stone of Christian ethics, of Christian social 
science. Very slowly does the world move toward 
the realization of this truth; it is but a small sec¬ 
tion of the Christian church, even, that compre¬ 
hends it. The sects proceed upon the theory that 
rivalry, and not cooperation, is the basis on which 
neighboring churches coexist; if they should make 
their creeds correspond with their deeds, they 
would profess their faith, not in the communion of 
saints, but in the competition of saints. The sug¬ 
gestion that churches dwelling in the same neigh¬ 
borhood should govern themselves by the Christian 
law in their relations with one another is often 
sneered at by sectarian leaders as visionary and 
impractical. “ That may come to pass in the mil¬ 
lennium,” it is said, “ but you cannot make it work 
in our day.” When the churches themselves thus 
flatly repudiate the Christian law, it is scarcely to 
be wondered at that the factories spurn it. Yet it 
is the law of the church and of the factory, a law 
which not merely rests on the authoritative word of 
Christ, but which can be abundantly verified by 
experience. Out of all the turmoil and confusion 
of centuries of competition steadily emerges this 


180 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


truth, that it is not by strife and warfare, but by 
unity and cooperation, that humanity advances. 
The way of welfare is the way of peace. History, 
as well as Christian morality, warns us that we 
cannot mount to power and happiness upon the 
ruin of our fellows. This law of the unity of 
human interests is not true because Christ taught 
it; he taught it because it is true. It is the funda¬ 
mental fact of human society; any adequate in¬ 
duction of human experience will verify it. Men 
have doubted it, denied it, fought against it through 
all the ages, but the word standeth sure, and every 
generation that passes brings it into clearer light. 

When Moses chid his contending countrymen, 
saying, “ Sirs, ye are brethren ; why do ye wrong 
one to another?” the one most deeply in the 
wrong thrust him away, saying, “ Who made thee 
a ruler and a judge over us ? ” That has always 
been the answer of human brutality and aggres¬ 
siveness whenever the fact of the brotherhood of 
man has been asserted. But every year brings us 
a little nearer to the recognition of this principle, 
and we shall see, by and by, that it governs the 
relations of men in industrial society as well as in 
the church, the family, and the state. 

“ Sirs, ye are brethren ! ” You cannot obliter¬ 
ate that fact. You cannot afford to ignore it. In 
all your strikes and your lockouts, your black-list¬ 
ing and your boycotting, your combinations of 
capital to hold labor down and of laborers to defy 
and coerce capital, remember that the law of your 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 181 

being is, not conflict, but cooperation, and that 
while you are fighting one another you are fighting 
against the stars in their courses, against the Ruler 
of the universe; that you are doing not only a 
wicked, but an absurd, an unnatural, a monstrous 
thing. 

2. Christianity teaches that the employer and 
the employed are not only brethren, but that they 
are also partners in business. You think immedi¬ 
ately of the counsels of Paul addressed to masters 
and servants. This, you will say, is the relation 
recognized by the Christian ethics. And surely 
masters and servants are not business partners. I 
do not forget these words, nor do I fail to remem¬ 
ber that the servants to whom Paul is writing 
were bondservants or slaves, — not even employees, 
but chattels of their employers. It will not be 
claimed that this is the relation which Christianity 
intends to establish. That Christ and his apostles 
recognized slavery as existing, and did not set 
themselves against it to overthrow it by direct 
onset, is most true; but it will be readily admitted 
that they established principles of morality which 
inevitably undermined it, and that they sought to 
guide industrial society toward a very different 
form of organization from that which is involved 
in slavery. That very principle which we have 
just been studying, of the brotherhood of man, 
of the organic unity of society, is the logical an¬ 
tithesis of slavery. That the time must certainly 
arrive when this institution should pass away, 


182 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


when the master should cease to be the owner 
of the workman, and the laborer should cease to be 
the chattel of the employer, was as certain as that 
the kingdom of God should come. This was part 
of what was meant by the coming of the kingdom 
of God, for which men were taught to pray. 

To slavery and serfdom the wage system has 
succeeded. Shall we say that this is the final 
form of industrial society ? This is by no means 
clear; for though Christianity may recognize the 
wage system as it recognized slavery, and may 
not only refuse to make war upon it, but may even 
endeavor to persuade both employers and employed 
to behave justly and kindly toward one another 
while in this relation, still I have no doubt that 
the logic of Christianity must lead on to a higher 
and more equitable relation between them than 
that which is established by the wage system. 

It is not necessary to use any extravagant lan¬ 
guage with regard to the condition of the wage- 
laborer. We sometimes hear him called a slave, 
and doubtless this seems to those of us who know 
the degree of comfort and independence to which 
many of our workingmen in England and America 
have attained an exaggerated and even preposter¬ 
ous assertion. Yet the fact cannot be denied that 
the tendency of the wage system of competitive 
industry is to divorce the working class both from 
the land and from capital. And it is certain as 
fate that a working class thus practically separated 
from the land and from capital — having, as a 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 


183 


rule, no possession or control of the natural re¬ 
sources of the earth or the instruments of in¬ 
dustry — will be a dependent class. 

That this is the tendency of the wage system 
can scarcely be doubted. This tendency was al¬ 
lowed free play, as we have seen, in England 
during the first part of this century, and the 
degradation of labor was horrible. It has been 
checked since that time, partly by the intervention 
of good-will in the form of the Factory Legislation, 
partly by the combination of the laborers them¬ 
selves. Doubtless the labor organizations have 
been the more efficient cause. And it is a palpa¬ 
ble fact that, under a competitive wage system, 
labor can preserve itself from practical enslave¬ 
ment only by the maintenance of a standing army. 
That, in effect, is exactly what the labor organiza¬ 
tions amount to. They are the standing army of 
labor, maintained at great cost, to prevent the sub¬ 
jugation of labor by associated capital. 

Now, I do not think that Christianity contem¬ 
plates the maintenance of standing armies of any 
sort. Whatever the politicians and economists 
may mean, the advent of Christ meant “ Peace 
on earth and good-will to men,” and the coming 
of his kingdom is signalized by the beating of 
swords into plowshares and of spears into pruning- 
hooks. Therefore, I am sure that Christianity 
must have something better in store for us than 
a system which involves organized conflict. There¬ 
fore it seems probable that the immediate effect of 


184 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


Christianity must be the modification of the wage 
system and the incorporation with it of certain ele¬ 
ments which shall tend to identify more perfectly 
and obviously the interests of the employer and 
the employed. Some form of business partnership 
between capital and labor is the logical and natu¬ 
ral result of the application of Christian principles 
to this department of human affairs. 

In making this adjustment, it will not be neces¬ 
sary to trample on economic laws nor to ignore the 
facts of human nature. The employer who recog¬ 
nizes his workmen as partners in production simply 
recognizes a fact. His partners they surely are. 
No clear economic analysis can make anything 
else of them. “ What is the nature of wages ? ” 
asks an economist of the old school, and answers 
thus : “ A capitalist and some laborers enter into 
an agreement for the purpose of production. Of 
this product the capitalist is entitled to retain a 
certain share, and the laborers a certain share.” 1 
This is a clear statement, and it is the exact eco¬ 
nomic truth. The sooner we make our organiza¬ 
tions of industry frankly conform to it, the sooner 
we shall have peace and plenty. It is quite use¬ 
less to fight against facts. 

The truth that economists derive from their anal¬ 
ysis of production is, then, the same truth that 
the Christian moralist deduces from the law of 
Christ. That all producers are partners is the 
corollary of the doctrine of human brotherhood. 

1 Quarterly Journal of Economics , i. 234. 


THE LOGIC OF CHBISTIANITY. 


185 


If all men are brethren, the relation of the work¬ 
men to the organizer of work cannot be perma¬ 
nently that of a slave and master, or of depen¬ 
dent and patron, but must be that of cooperation 
and partnership. This is the logic of Christian¬ 
ity. This is the ideal which Christian ethics 
lifts up before us. This is the result to which all 
the overturnings in human society are steadily 
leading on. And although, as I have said, Chris¬ 
tianity never proposes any violent assault upon 
the existing social order, but counsels all men to 
behave as Christians, with whatever social ma¬ 
chinery they may be called to work, yet it tends 
steadily and powerfully toward the purification of 
social ideals, and the reconstruction of society ac¬ 
cording to its own law. 

A man may be a Christian who is a master or a 
slave, but the logic of Christianity is liberty. A 
man may be a Christian who is an aristocrat or a 
plebeian, but the logic of Christianity is democracy. 
A man may be a Christian who is a capitalist or a 
wage-laborer, but the logic of Christianity is coop¬ 
eration. 

That the outcome of evolution in the political 
sphere is democracy seems to be tolerably clear. 
Carlyle admitted it long ago, with many deplor- 
ings; the political soothsayers of the period find 
no other sign in their horoscope. Some of the 
foremost nations have reached that level already ; 
the rest are following fast. That political power 
is to be widely distributed admits of no doubt. 


186 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


Now, I submit that the political enfranchisement 
of the masses of the people implies and requires 
their industrial enfranchisement. To make men 
who have no rights in the soil of the nation, and 
no control of the capital of the nation, by their 
votes rulers of the nation, is a political absurdity. 
The men who rule the state must have some larger 
stake in the commonwealth than a day’s stipend; 
else they will rule carelessly, and mayhap mali¬ 
ciously. Those who are endowed with political 
power must be allied in interest with those who 
control the material resources of the state. Peace 
and security can be found in no other path. Can 
any man who has ever taken the trouble to think 
of what is involved in government by the people 
entertain a doubt as to the truth of this proposi¬ 
tion ? 

The fact that the working class is losing its 
hold upon the land is pretty obvious. The num¬ 
ber of mechanics and operatives who own homes of 
their own is not increasing in the country at large. 
There are a few localities, like Philadelphia, where 
Building Associations have resulted in increasing 
the number of proprietors; but in the manufac¬ 
turing communities generally this is not the case. 
The precariousness of employment and the fre¬ 
quent need of migrating in search of work makes 
the ownership of a home undesirable to the major¬ 
ity of mechanics and operatives. The great com¬ 
panies usually prefer to furnish tenements for their 
employees; then, if trouble arises, they can be 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 


187 


evicted without ceremony. Some companies, it is 
true, pursue a more humane policy, and not only 
encourage, but assist their workmen in procuring 
homes. Still, taking the country through, it will 
be found that a constantly diminishing population 
of the wage-workers live in homes of their own. 

To what extent it is true that the capital of the 
country is passing out of their hands I cannot 
say. The savings-banks do, indeed, show a con¬ 
siderable increase of deposits; the proportion of 
these savings belonging to wage-workers is not 
well known. My impression is that clerks, domes¬ 
tics, school-teachers, and professional people own 
a large share of them. There appears to be a ten¬ 
dency to separate more and more widely the capi¬ 
talistic classes from the working classes. I fear 
that there is a growing sentiment among the work¬ 
ing classes that the possession of capital in such 
small hoards as they are able to gather is not 
worth while. The whole socialistic spirit is, of 
course, averse to the accumulation of individual 
property; and even the labor organizations, when 
they are not avowedly socialistic, are inclined to 
cultivate a feeling of dependence on the union 
rather than on private resources. But the chief 
discouragement of saving has been the centralizing 
tendency in business. The large system of indus¬ 
try is more and more prevailing; and the oppor¬ 
tunity of the small capitalist or the small manu¬ 
facturer lessens year by year. Thirty years ago 
the wage-worker might hope, if he saved a few 


188 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


hundred dollars, to set up business for himself in 
a small way; that chance is steadily diminishing. 
The big fishes devour the little ones so speedily 
and so surely that such risks are not often taken. 

For such reasons the wage-working class tends, 
under present conditions, to become a propertiless 
class ; that ugly word, the proletariat, threatens to 
be incorporated into our common speech. It seems 
to me that such a class cannot safely be permitted 
to exist in a democracy. I do not believe that we 
can afford to have a large toiling population who 
own no property, and have no direct and conscious 
share in the capital of the country ; who even re¬ 
gard their interests as separate from or hostile to 
those of the propertied classes. And it seems to 
me that some way must be found of identifying 
the interests of the people who do the work of the 
country with those of the people who hold the cap¬ 
ital and direct the work. The logic of the Chris¬ 
tian law must be frankly accepted, and the fact 
must be recognized that employer and employed 
are business partners. 

To this complexion it must come at last. The 
only question is how we shall achieve this social 
readjustment. It may come as the issue of social 
conflicts and agrarian wars ; it may come as politi¬ 
cal equality came, with garments rolled in blood; it 
may come, and ought to come, as the slowly ripen¬ 
ing fruit of Christian sentiments in the hearts of 
employers and employed. To this end it is need¬ 
ful that all Christians, whether employers or em- 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 


189 


ployees, should understand the logic of Christian¬ 
ity, and be ready to find and follow the plain path 
of its principles. 

That the law of Christ is the law of cooperation 
seems to me very plain. We are steadily travel¬ 
ing toward an industrial order which will identify 
the interests of employer and employed. How 
fast we shall go is a question of expediency. 
Doubtless we might go too rapidly. It is possible 
that there may be laborers in the field of the world 
to-day who are scarcely fit for freedom — to whom 
some sort of peonage would be the best regimen. 
The trouble on this score is that there is no class 
of persons, so far as I know, who are fit to be mas¬ 
ters, — to whom the possession of such power over 
their fellow-men would not be a serious injury. 
That there are many other laborers who are only 
fit to be wage-receivers is undoubtedly true. They 
lack the mental and moral discipline which would 
qualify them for associative effort. But there are 
many, I am sure, who are ready to take some steps 
in this direction. What the first steps ought to 
be I shall try to make plain in the next chapter. 
But the one thing needful is to identify, as speedily 
as possible and as completely as possible, the inter¬ 
ests of the men who do the work with those of the 
men who direct the work. 

We have already in operation certain forms of 
cooperative industry. What is called industrial 
cooperation is, indeed, only a faint and partial ap¬ 
plication of the larger Christian principle. But it 


190 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


is good so far as it goes. It is a step in the right 
direction. It will lead those who practice it up to 
a point from which they may discern the broader 
applications of the law. 

Cooperation is the method by which men com¬ 
bine their savings as capital, and their efforts as 
laborers, and their interests as consumers in trade 
or manufacture or banking. It is an attempt to 
bring a large number of men together and unite 
them on the basis of mutual interest and mutual 
help. Within the association thus formed there is 
no competition; the interests of all are identical. 
Between this group of men and other groups or 
other individuals there may be sharp competition 
and rivalry; it is here that the narrowness and 
partiality of the scheme discovers itself; but it is 
something to teach the members of this group to 
cooperate with one another. 

The universal complaint of the laboring classes 
is that the organizers of business are getting the 
lion’s share of the increasing wealth; that much 
goes to profits which ought to come to them in 
wages. “ The merchants, the manufacturers, the 
bankers,” they say, “ are getting rich out of our 
labor, while we remain poor. Therefore let us be 
our own merchants, our own employers, our own 
bankers, and keep all the profits for ourselves.” 
This is what is called cooperation. 

In three countries of the old world this principle 
has been developed in three different directions. 
In Germany, the greatest success has been achieved 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 191 

in cooperative banking; in France, in cooperative 
manufacturing; in England, in cooperative mer¬ 
chandising. 

The cooperative banking which has been so 
successful in Germany is similar in principle to 
the operations of the Building and Loan Associa¬ 
tions in this country, which in Philadelphia and in 
other cities have been very popular and useful. 
In 1852, Herr Schulze of Delitzsch succeeded in 
organizing, in accordance with laws which he had 
himself been instrumental in securing, a little 
“ credit union ” in his own town; and from this 
small beginning great things have come. In 1877, 
there were in Germany 1,827 of these loan associa¬ 
tions, with 1,000,000 members ; they had $40,000,- 
000 of capital, and transacted an annual business 
of about $155,000,000. Italy, Austria, Hungary, 
and Russia have all followed the example of Ger¬ 
many, and in these four countries there were, in 
1889, no less than 8,628 such associations, employ¬ 
ing a capital of $350,000,000. 

In France, as I have said, the success of coopera¬ 
tion has been most marked in the line of produc¬ 
tion. Of purely cooperative industries there are a 
goodly number in France,— most of them small, 
but thrifty and successful. Thus, I find, in the city 
of Paris alone, not less than 74 cooperative socie¬ 
ties, engaged in all sorts of industries, — printing, 
watchmaking, saddlery, baking, cab - driving, — 
with a total number of 4,920 associates, and a 
yearly aggregate of work done amounting to about 


192 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


110,600,000. But it is in that peculiar form of 
cooperation which is known as industrial partner¬ 
ship, or profit sharing, that the French have achieved 
such signal success. That will he considered in an¬ 
other place. But these various forms of partner¬ 
ship bid fair to work a peaceful and beneficent rev¬ 
olution in the industries of that thrifty nation, and 
to establish between the different orders of society 
relations of amity and solidarity of interest that 
will go farther toward keeping the peace than all 
that can be done by the armies of France or by her 
legislators. When the capitalists and workmen of 
any country are thus confederated in the pursuits 
of peaceful industry, society has a powerful security 
against insurrection and war. Accordingly, it ap¬ 
pears that in Paris, where this industrial reorgan¬ 
ization has made more progress than anywhere else, 
there seems to be less fear of popular outbreaks 
at the present time than in some of the provinces. 
When General Boulanger was making his theat¬ 
rical demonstrations, a few years ago, in the rural 
districts, Paris was perfectly quiet; the newspa¬ 
pers all declared that in this once feverish capi¬ 
tal the great agitator had no following at all. 
How much of this is due to the Me All Mission I 
do not know; quite a little of it, I suspect. But 
I also believe that the peaceful organization of in¬ 
dustry, by which employers and workmen become 
business partners, has something to do with the 
greater sobriety and conservatism of the Parisian 
working people. 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 193 

In England, also, something has been done in 
the way of cooperative industry. During a recent 
visit to London, I found two exhibitions in pro¬ 
gress, of a very interesting character, showing the 
growth of this form of social organization. The 
first was at the house of the Earl of Aberdeen, 
under the auspices of the cooperative Aid Associa¬ 
tion, — an association formed to aid workingmen’s 
cooperative societies. More than seventy of these 
societies exist in different parts of England; of 
these, thirty were represented by their work in this 
exhibition. Textile industries of various sorts, 
fustian, hosiery, worsted, were here represented ; 
boots and shoes, padlocks, washing and wringing 
machines, watches, cigarettes, mats, portmanteaus, 
trunks and bags, cocoa and chocolate, are all man¬ 
ufactured by various cooperative societies, and 
printing, house-decorating, and other such indus¬ 
tries are similarly organized. It is acknowledged 
that many of these associations are doing business 
in a small way, and that cooperative production in 
England is still in its infancy ; but there were re¬ 
ported at that time 78 such organizations in Eng¬ 
land, with 22,480 members, a capital of 14,750,000, 
a business amounting to $9,000,000 a year, and a 
profit of $350,000, or seven and one half per cent, 
on the capital invested. Such is the infant indus¬ 
try of cooperative production in England ; it seems 
to be a healthy infant, and bids fair to grow up. 
Lord Brassey, a nobleman who has accumulated a 
fortune as an employer of labor, made an address 


194 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


at this meeting, in which he pointed out the diffi¬ 
culties in the way of industrial cooperators, in the 
keen competition to which they were forced with 
great corporations and very able managers ; but 
declared that these associations were working on 
sound principles, and said that he was glad to 
admit that there had been a certain amount of suc¬ 
cess. “ An ideal social system,” said this high- 
minded nobleman, “ involves a more even distribu¬ 
tion of resources ; the cooperative movement tends 
to that result, and we wish it to advance and de¬ 
velop as it never has done before.” 

The other meeting to which I alluded took place 
in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. It was the 
National Cooperative Festival, the first great ex¬ 
hibition which was held in England for the purpose 
of showing the extent of the work accomplished in 
the application of this principle to industry and 
trade. To prove that some popular interest was 
felt in this exhibition, I may remark that 27,169 
persons were admitted to the Palace on the day of 
this festival. Not only from London, but from all 
over England came throngs of people to see the 
fruit that has grown on this fair tree of coopera¬ 
tion. To the cooperative workers here assembled 
came greetings from some of the most distinguished 
political economists of England, and from several 
of the great statesmen. Mr. Gladstone wrote : “ I 
am certainly under the belief that cooperative sup¬ 
ply for the working classes has been the instrument 
of very great advantage, social and moral as well 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 


195 


as economical; that it has, on the one hand, hus¬ 
banded their resources, and on the other confirmed 
the habit of thrift and the sense of self-reliance 
and independence. To an agency so powerful and 
beneficial I tender my warm acknowledgments, 
with my hope that it may be even more prosperous 
and efficient in the future than in the past. I re¬ 
gard cooperative production as having special uses 
of its own, and as, on the whole, in its principles, 
not less beneficial than cooperation for supply; but 
as more difficult of execution, and as requiring the 
most cautious scrutiny of means and ends in each 
particular case.” 

Mr. Holyoake, the historian of cooperation, made 
an address on this occasion in which he set forth, 
with temperate eloquence, the purposes and aims 
of cooperators. “We are no enemies,” he said, 
“ to capital. What we want is to get a moderate 
share of it into the hands of those who earn it. 
Labor cannot thrive without capital, nor can capi¬ 
tal earn a penny without labor. Therefore, since 
both are needful to the production of profit, both 
should share it. . . . The doctrine we proclaim is 
that labor has the same right to a share of profit 
as capital has to its interest. The ordinary out¬ 
come of capitalism is seen in the sweating system. 
It gives to the workman the wages of misery, and 
leaves him to perish when it no longer needs his 
services. Many generous employers show more 
consideration, and often pay wages in full when 
they make no profit. This is Employer’s Social- 


196 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


ism, which is no more respectable than State So¬ 
cialism, since it subjects those who accept it to the 
humiliation of existing by sufferance and charity. 
Cooperators object to live by charity. They make 
no complaint of the aggressiveness of capital, that 
means feebleness; they make no supplication for 
better treatment, that means helplessness; but 
they decline to depend for subsistence on the 
condescension of capitalists. They have found a 
better way. Here are to be seen the products of 
cooperative workshops, where workmen and work¬ 
women employ their own capital, and loan what 
more they need at current rates of interest; and 
all the profit they make is equitably apportioned 
among those who earn it by brain or hand. We 
show their work to-day, and ask all honest pur¬ 
chasers to buy it. We make no war on property ; 
we envy no man his riches. We ask no gifts from 
the wealthy. All we ask is custom. . . . We do 
not expect the principles we maintain to be ac¬ 
cepted all at once. The millennium of capital 
came long ago ; the millennium of labor is hardly 
yet in sight, and will come in ways unseen by us.” 

There are few Anglo-Saxons on either side of 
the sea who cannot sympathize with these manly 
words, and who will not send their best wishes after 
the men who are making this brave effort after 
industrial independence. 

I have spoken of the societies of cooperative pro¬ 
duction which were represented in this festival by 
their handiwork, but these were only a fraction of 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 197 

the great company of English cooperators. In 
England, as I have said, the success of coopera¬ 
tion has been mainly in the line of storekeeping. 
How great that success is few Americans know. 
Such mammoth establishments as the Rochdale 
Equitable Pioneers, with a membership of 11,161 
persons, with a capital of 11,730,000, with annual 
sales of $1,310,000 ; and a net profit of something 
like $2,000,000 ; the Leeds Industrial, with annual 
sales of about $2,500,000 ; Oldham, with annual 
sales of $1,600,000; Bolton, with annual sales of 
nearly $1,500,000, and many others, show the ex¬ 
tent to which cooperative distribution is carried in 
England. Thirteen such societies are named in a 
table before me, the annual business of each of 
which exceeds $1,000,000. There is a Great Co¬ 
operative Wholesale Society, which supplies these 
various local stores, and which in 1883 did a busi¬ 
ness amounting to more than $20,000,000. 

Let me sum up this statistical statement by 
giving you the footings as presented at the Crystal 
Palace festival. These include both kinds of socie¬ 
ties, the productive and the distributive. Of these 
societies, there are in the United Kingdom 1,281, 
with 833,811 members. In 1887, the business 
done by these bodies was represented by $155,- 
000,000, while the profits were $14,800,000; the 
capital invested was more than $55,000,000, conse¬ 
quently the rate of profit was about twenty - five 
per cent, per annum. 

In our own country, cooperation has been experi- 


198 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


mented with to some extent, and in some depart¬ 
ments, as, for example, in the Cooperative Building 
and Loan Associations, with considerable success. 
In 1888, Mr. F. B. Sanborn reported that there 
were at least 3,000, perhaps 3,500, such associa¬ 
tions in this country; that the loanable capital in 
their hands at any given time must be at least 
$300,000,000 ; and that the property accumulated 
by the aid of these associations within the last forty 
years was from $500,000,000 to $750,000,000. 
Cooperative production has had but scant oppor¬ 
tunity in this country to prove its practicability. 
Dr. Albert Shaw has told an interesting and in¬ 
structive story of the success of certain cooperative 
coopers in Minneapolis; and Dr. E. W. Bemis 
has carefully compiled the facts concerning coop¬ 
eration in New England. Many such enterprises 
have been set on foot and abandoned; but Dr. Be¬ 
mis gives the statistics of twenty cooperative facto¬ 
ries doing business in New England in 1886, with 
an aggregate membership of 1,215, and an aggre¬ 
gate product of $738,000. In distributive coop¬ 
eration the success has been much more marked. 
The figures of Dr. Bemis give us information 
respecting fifty-three cooperative stores, with 5,470 
shareholders, and an annual trade of $1,609,401. 
And putting together all the kinds of cooperation, 
factories, creameries, stores, and banks, he con¬ 
cludes that the cooperative business of New Eng¬ 
land must have amounted in 1887 to $7,000,000. 

Leaving out of sight the Cooperative Building 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 


199 


Associations, these figures are small when com¬ 
pared with the totals for Old England. I am not 
quite able to explain the meagre results of these 
cooperative experiments in America. Perhaps 
they may be due to the fact that the working class 
in this country has hitherto been less sharply dif¬ 
ferentiated from the other classes, is therefore less 
accustomed to stand together for the protection of 
its interest, and therefore less able to combine in 
industry and trade. 

By this form of industrial cooperation the func¬ 
tions of labor and capital are combined: the labor¬ 
ers are the capitalists; the function of the entre¬ 
preneur, or undertaker, is eliminated; every laborer 
is also a capitalist; every workingman is his own 
employer. Professor Marshall says that “ the ideal 
which the founders of the cooperative movement 
had before them was that of regenerating the 
world by restraining the cruel force of competition 
and substituting for it brotherly trust and coop¬ 
eration. They saw that, under the sway of com¬ 
petition, much of men’s energy is wasted in the 
endeavor to overreach one another. They saw the 
seller, whether of commodities or labor, striving 
to give as little, and that of as poor a quality, as 
he could. And they saw the buyer always trying 
to take advantage of the seller’s necessity, and 
thus forcing the seller, and especially the seller of 
labor, to struggle against a reduction of price, even 
when, if the buyer were more open with him, he 
might see that the reduction was necessary. The 


200 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


‘ Cooperative Faith ’ is rather felt than clearly ex¬ 
pressed, but it is earnestly held by shrewd prac¬ 
tical men. It is that these evils can be in a great 
measure removed by that spirit of brotherly trust 
and openness which, though undeveloped, is yet 
latent in man’s nature. It looks forward to a time 
when man shall have so far progressed that there 
shall be no needless secrecy in business, and each 
one shall think of promoting the general well-being 
as much as of protecting his own interests. Thus, 
its ultimate aim has a resemblance to that which 
prevailed in the early Christian church, and which 
led them to a community of goods. Cooperation 
is divided from most modern socialistic schemes 
by advocating no disturbance of private property, 
by insisting on self-help, and by abhorring state 
help and all unnecessary interference with indi¬ 
vidual freedom.” 1 

This ideal is one that we can well afford to 
cherish. Under the present industrial system, in 
which machinery plays so large a part, if the la¬ 
borer cannot achieve something like this, it is diffi¬ 
cult to see how he. can permanently improve his 
condition. For the law of the universe, a law that 
no man and no social system can greatly obstruct 
in its working, has ordained that intelligence shall 
be victor over mere force. Now, in a great and con¬ 
stantly increasing majority of the industrial opera¬ 
tions of the present day, the intelligence is mainly 
embodied in the machine: the machine does the 
1 Economics of Industry, p. 219. 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 201 

thinking; the machine is crystallized intelligence 
of the highest and finest quality. The man who 
tends the machine has very little thinking to do; 
his actions are largely automatic. 1 Therefore, by 
the law of the universe, the machine, or the man 
who owns it, will take the largest share of the pro¬ 
duct. It is useless to kick against this law; it will 
get itself enforced in the long run in spite of us. 
If the laborer wishes materially to improve his 
condition, he must own the machine. How is he 
going to get it? That is a very hard question. 
In some peaceful and reasonable way, I trust. He 
must not think of stealing it or of taking it by 
violence; when he does that, he runs against an¬ 
other law of the universe which will destroy him. 
The only present prospect of his getting it lies in 
his learning to work and wait and save till he can 
possess it honestly. 

He will need, too, something besides the mar 
chinery: he will need a trained intelligence, a 
knowledge of trade, a technical skill, an educated 
taste, a grasp of affairs, that are not gained in a 
day; without these he will never be able to oper¬ 
ate his machinery successfully. Industry must, in 
these latter days, be conducted on the large sys¬ 
tem; many workmen will be compelled to com¬ 
bine, with their machines and their savings; and 
unless they are, collectively, as competent to man¬ 
age a great business as the ablest of our modern 
captains of industry, and unless they can agree as 
1 Microcosms , ii. 388. 


202 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


to methods and measures, which of course is too 
much to hope for, they will be obliged to choose 
some one who has the requisite business qualities, 
and commit the management to him, and pay him 
liberally for this service. To unite thus in the 
choice of a leader, and to cooperate with him and 
with one another, requires a high degree of intelli¬ 
gence and self-control. The patience and frugality 
which can accumulate the necessary capital, and 
the judgment and moderation and sweet reason¬ 
ableness which can harmoniously and successfully 
direct the management of it in a great manufactur¬ 
ing industry, are not so common among working¬ 
men as they will be one day. Where they do not 
exist, cooperation can never be successful. It is 
the lack of these qualities that explains the failure 
of many of the cooperative experiments. Truly 
has it been said that large success in cooperation 
must await “the development of the cooperative 
man.” And yet there is some reason to hope, with 
Dr. Albert Shaw, “ that all conditions are favor¬ 
able to his development, and that his advent will 
be a realized fact almost before we are aware of 
it.” What chiefly hinders this is the preoccupa¬ 
tion of the mind of the wage-worker with the busi¬ 
ness of maintaining war against capitalists and 
employers. The workingmen have expended a 
great deal of time and energy and money, during 
the last twenty-five years, in efforts designed to 
wrest from the managers of business a larger share 
of the product. Some of this expenditure was 


THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIANITY. 203 

necessary, no doubt; but if they had given a good 
portion of it to the accumulation of capital, and 
the equipment of themselves for the control of 
productive industries, they would be a great deal 
better off than they are to-day. 

It is probable, however, as I shall try to show 
farther on, that for a great majority of the work¬ 
men now at work industrial partnership or profit 
sharing would be a safer and more profitable 
method than pure cooperation. The captain of 
industry who will make them partners with him¬ 
self in sharing the gains of industry can, in most 
cases, with his intelligence, his business experience, 
and his executive energy, organize and direct their 
labor in such a way as to realize from it, in wages 
and added profits, a larger reward for laborers 
than they could gain by any combinations of their 
own. If, under such leadership, they will make 
the most of their opportunities, and save their 
earnings, and train themselves and their children 
to studious, sober, industrious ways of living, 
using for purposes of self-improvement the en¬ 
larged leisure that must come to them through the 
marvelous improvement of the power of machinery, 
they will greatly hasten “ the development of the 
cooperative man,” and the coming of that king¬ 
dom of peaceful industry of which he will be the 
ruler. 


VIII. 


THE REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 

In a previous chapter we traced the industrial 
revolution through the collapse of unrestricted com¬ 
petition to the rise of combination, and studied 
the method of arbitration as a means of adjusting 
labor disputes. That arbitration is the word of 
the hour is clear enough; that it is the last word 
of the answer to the labor question is not probable. 
For the wage system arbitration is indispensable; 
but we found good reason in the last chapter for 
hoping that there is something better in store for 
the laboring millions than the wage system could 
promise them. 

An intelligent capitalist employer in the West 
takes this philosophical view of the matter : “ Ar¬ 
bitration is not a panacea to cure the ills of labor, 
but it represents the next stage of human develop¬ 
ment in advance of strikes. In the Middle Ages 
might was right, and every dispute was settled by 
a resort to force. This was the age of feudalism. 
Following that came the establishment of courts of 
justice for the settlement of disputes, and the judge 
and lawyer took the place of the baron and soldier 
in the settlement of private differences. Strikes 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 205 

and lockouts are the characteristics of the feudal 
age of labor and capital, and arbitration will be 
the characteristic of the age of law. But arbitra¬ 
tion will probably bring no greater satisfaction for 
either side. It will merely involve the use of dif¬ 
ferent and less costly and more humane methods, 
and hence it means one step in advance.” 1 If ar¬ 
bitration uses less costly and more humane methods, 
it ought to bring some satisfaction to both sides. 
But the fact that it furnishes only a partial solu¬ 
tion to this great problem is not to he concealed. 

Professor Henry C. Adams offers this opinion : 
“ Arbitration is not the missing coupling between 
capital and labor, but is the thing for which, at 
the present time, it is practical that workingmen 
should strive. Its establishment is the first step 
toward the overthrow of the wages system.” 2 And 
Professor Clark, in that admirable little book from 
which I have so often quoted, makes this statement: 
“ The general prevalence of [arbitration] would 
mean a reign of law rather than of force, and would 
mark an era in the moral evolution of society. The 
era would, however, be one of quasi-litigation. To 
he successful, the plan of arbitration requires many 
tribunals in ceaseless activity. It checks lockouts 
and strikes, and allays the antagonisms excited by 
these overt conflicts. The speedy establishment of 
these tribunals is, therefore, the present desidera¬ 
tum. Yet the arbitrative system is not an ideal 
one. Its fundamental defect lies in the fact that 
1 The Labor Problem , p. 91. 2 Ibid. p. 62. 


206 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


it concentrates the attention of employers and of 
workmen upon the terms of the division of their 
joint product. An issue of this kind, even if ami¬ 
cably adjusted, tends in itself in the direction of 
antagonism. It fails, moreover, to secure the 
largest product for division.” 1 

Under the wage system there is a natural and 
irrepressible conflict between the employer and his 
employees. It has been a common saying — we 
have all said it scores of times — that there is per¬ 
fect identity of interest between the workmen and 
their employer. This is what ought to be; but it 
is not what the wage system gives us. Under this 
system, as some one has said, their interests are no 
more identical than the interests of the buyer and 
the seller. They are alike interested in the work 
of production, in making the product as large as 
possible; when the division of the product comes 
to be made, the interest of the one party is antago¬ 
nistic to that of the other. The more the master 
gets, the less the men will get. The gains of pro¬ 
duction, after rent is deducted, are shared between 
those who have made them: one part goes to the 
capitalist-employer as interest on capital and earn¬ 
ings of management; the other part goes to the 
laborers as wages. The larger the one share is, the 
smaller the other must be. If there is a definite 
quantity of commodities to be divided between you 
and me, I shall find it quite impossible to convince 
you that it makes no difference to you how much I 
1 The Philosophy of Wealth, p. 178. 


REOR GANIZA TION OF INDUSTRY. 207 


take. Qf spiritual possessions it is true, that the 
more you part with the more you have left; hut it 
is not true of material things. In the distribution 
of the wealth produced, masters and men are not 
one, but twain. Arbitration tries to temper the 
inevitable strife; to keep the parties from fighting 
over the spoils ; to persuade them to use reason 
rather than force in making the division. But this 
is a difficult task; it is often hard to convince one 
of the parties that the other has not obtained an 
unfair share of the common gain. The diversity 
of interest keeps industrial society in unstable 
equilibrium. It is a great gain when men learn to 
apply moral standards to this problem, — to ask 
what they ought to have, rather than what they 
can extort; nevertheless, the clamors of self-inter¬ 
est will be loud and incessant, and the moral judg¬ 
ment will sometimes fail to get a candid hearing. 
This is a very unfortunate condition of things, and 
men of good-will are constantly constrained to ask 
whether some adjustment of the relations between 
the employer and the laborer might not be made, 
by which their interests should become, in some 
greater measure, harmonious, if not identical. 
This is what is proposed in the scheme of indus¬ 
trial partnership or profit sharing, which is des¬ 
tined, we may hope, to form the next stage in the 
industrial evolution. This plan recognizes a lim¬ 
ited partnership between the employer and the 
employed, and provides that wages shall vary with 
profits, rising as they rise, and falling as they fall. 


208 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


It is an admission that the workingman has an in¬ 
terest in the business ; that the contract by which 
he receives a certain wage does not express his 
whole relation to the business ; that it is conducted, 
not exclusively for the benefit of the employer, but 
also for the benefit of the laborer. Instead of im¬ 
plying, as the strictly competitive system implies, 
that the employer will give his men the least share 
of their joint product that he can compel them to 
take, it implies that the employer will give his men 
the largest share of the product that he can afford 
to give. It is an announcement that the manager 
of the business intends that. his helpers of all 
grades shall reap with himself the benefits of any 
prosperous fortunes that may overtake the enter¬ 
prise, while they bear with him the burdens of the 
unprosperous years. 

This last point needs to be emphasized at the 
outset; because it is the one stereotyped objection 
to the plan, that it makes the workmen sharers in 
the profits and not in the losses. That, indeed, 
would be a serious objection if it were well 
grounded ; but the fact that it is urged shows how 
superficially the objectors have studied the plan. 
Of the hundreds of industrial establishments now 
working on this basis, there are few which do not, 
expressly or tacitly, recognize the fact that the 
workmen must share in the losses as well as in the 
gains. It is the phrase “ profit sharing,” probably, 
over which these rather careless critics have stum¬ 
bled. For this reason, it is better to use the other 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 209 

designation. “ Industrial partnership ” is a more 
descriptive name for the system. 

Under this system, the capital is furnished and 
the business is organized and directed by the 
employer: the workmen are paid wages at the 
market rate, and at the end of the year a stipu¬ 
lated percentage of the net profits is divided among 
them, each man’s dividend being proportioned to 
the amount of his earnings. Usually it is agreed 
that those only are to receive the dividend who 
have been in the service a certain length of time, 
and that workmen discharged for cause are not en¬ 
titled to a share in this fund. 

This plan makes the workmen partners in the 
business ; they are not merely “ hands,” they are 
associates; their eyes and their brains and their 
hearts are enlisted as well as their hands; their 
interests are identified with those of the employer; 
the larger the gains of the business are, the larger 
their share will be. 

“ Suppose that there are no gains,” one may 
query. “ Suppose what often happens, that the 
business makes no net profit during the year.” 
Then, of course, there will be nothing to divide. 
The workmen will have had their wages, all that 
they would have had under the old system, but 
they will get no bonus at the end of the year. 

“ But suppose there are losses, instead of prof¬ 
its,” the querist urges. “ Such seasons occur in 
most industries.” Undoubtedly ; and the system 
should provide for these by setting aside, at the 



210 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


end of every prosperous year, a certain share of 
the profits as a reserve fund, to keep the capital 
good in the unprosperous years. This reserve 
fund should always be set aside before the divi¬ 
dend to labor is made. Thus the workmen are 
made to share in the losses as well as in the gains 
of the business; their dividends are diminished 
in the good years that their wages may be paid in 
the bad years. It would not be difficult to make 
the average workingman see the reason of this 
provision and feel the justice of it; it will be 
found, on experiment, that the average American 
workingman will behave in a very considerate and 
manly way when any attempt is made by his em¬ 
ployer to take him into confidence with regard to 
matters of this nature. 

Let us suppose a case, which, a& we shall shortly 
see, is the type of a large and constantly increas¬ 
ing class. An employer calls his men about him, 
at the beginning of the year, and thus addresses 
them : “ This business is not mine exclusively ; it 
is yours also. I contribute the materials, the ma¬ 
chinery, the organizing and directing force; you 
do the work. I have paid you wages hitherto, at 
the market rate. I shall continue to pay you as 
much as similar workmen are receiving in other 
establishments. I will also pay myself a certain 
reasonable salary for managing the business; no 
more than I could earn as manager, if I chose to 
hire myself out to another man. At the end of 
the year, if we have made anything, I will set aside 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 211 


ten per cent, of the profits for a reserve fund; of 
all that is left, I will give you one third, dividing 
it among you in proportion to your several earn¬ 
ings. Thus, if the business clears thirty thousand 
dollars, I shall set aside three thousand dollars for 
a reserve fund, and there will be twenty-seven 
thousand dollars left. Of this your share will be 
nine thousand dollars. There are one hundred of 
you, and you will have, on an average, ninety dol¬ 
lars each. I am only imagining a case; the divi¬ 
dend may be much less than this, but your share, 
whatever it may be, I will pay you on the tenth 
day of January next. If we make no profits, you 
will have nothing but your wages, and I shall 
have nothing except my salary. The larger the 
profits of the business are, the larger your share 
will be. The more diligently you work, the more 
careful and economical you are in handling ma¬ 
terials and tools, the larger will be the profit we 
shall have to divide. I promise to do my best to 
make your share as large as possible; I trust you 
will do as much for me.” 

What would be the probable result of such a 
proposition ? Reasoning from what we know of 
human nature, is it not likely that it would be 
accepted by the workmen with gratitude ; that it 
would establish at once a friendly instead of a 
suspicious and antipathetic relation between them¬ 
selves and their employer; that it would render 
their labor more efficient, and result in much sav¬ 
ing in the use of machinery and materials; and 


212 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


that, in many cases, the net profits would be so 
much increased through the increased efficiency 
and economy of labor that, after paying the work¬ 
men’s share, the employer would have quite as 
much left as he would have had under the old 
arrangement ? 

On purely economical grounds, therefore, this 
method is justified. Whatever increases the effi¬ 
ciency of labor is beneficial both to the employer 
and to the employed ; it increases the product to 
be divided between them. This is a principle 
which has not, indeed, always been recognized by 
economists ; they sometimes reason about “ labor ” 
as if it were a constant force like gravitation, 
which can be neither increased nor diminished. 
This Adam Smith expressly says : “ The productive 
powers of the same number of laborers cannot be 
increased but in consequence either of some addi¬ 
tion and improvement to those machines and in¬ 
struments which facilitate and abridge labor, or of 
a more proper division and distribution of employ¬ 
ment.” 1 It is this habit of reasoning about labor 
which has made much of the trouble. The laborer 
is not merely the embodiment of so many foot¬ 
pounds of muscular force ; he is a human being, 
with hopes and fears, affections and ambitions; 
and the efficiency of his work, in the great ma¬ 
jority of callings, greatly depends upon his state 
of mind. If his interest is thoroughly enlisted in 
the enterprise in which he is engaged, if his good- 
* The Wealth, of Nations, Book II. chap, iii, 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 213 

Will is called into exercise, liis product may be 
largely increased. The obvious and painful fact 
is that the fierce and bitter conflict between the 
employing classes and the laborers has developed 
unsympathetic if not unfriendly relations between 
them. There are exceptional cases, but this is the 
rule. And this state of feeling affects production 
injuriously. A vast amount of poor, heartless, 
wasteful, slipshod work is due to this cause. And 
the employer who can succeed in establishing bet¬ 
ter relations between himself and his workmen 
will discover the benefits of this policy in the foot¬ 
ings of his annual balance sheet. 

What is of not less consequence, he will have 
peace and good-will between himself and his work¬ 
men, instead of suspicion and strife; he can make 
his contracts with confidence; he will feel well 
assured that he will not be interrupted by threats 
of a strike when the tide of business turns toward 
prosperity. 

But even if gains should be somewhat lessened 
that the workmen’s share might be increased, 
many employers would feel that the improvement 
in the circumstances of their men and the opening 
of a door of hope to them are benefits for which 
they would be willing to make some sacrifices. 
My own belief is that industrial partnership would 
prove, in almost all cases, a pecuniary advantage 
to the employer, but it would be a mistake to urge 
the measure on employers wholly or mainly on the 
ground of pecuniary advantage. This labor ques- 


214 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


tion will never be settled until employers as well as 
workmen form the liabit of thinking of something 
besides their pecuniary advantage. I would seek 
to commend this scheme to the captains of indus¬ 
try by appealing to their humanity and their jus¬ 
tice ; by asking them to consider the welfare of 
their workmen as well as their own. I believe 
that these leaders of business are not devoid of 
chivalry; that they are ready to respond to the 
summons of good-will. Many of them are tired of 
the strife that is engendered by competition, and 
they would fain escape from that constant collision 
of interests which calls for arbitration ; the prom¬ 
ise of industrial peace is a welcome word to them; 
and the desire not only to live in amity with the 
men by whose labor they are seeking their fortunes, 
but to befriend and help them, is not always absent 
from their breasts. Materialistic economy sneers 
at sentiments of this sort as visionary and ineffec¬ 
tive ; the time is coming, I trust, when it will not 
be possible to leave them out of the account in our 
reckoning of the economic forces. 

I have been speaking hypothetically, but there 
is small need of this, for the system of industrial 
partnership is no mere airy possibility; its wisdom 
and efficiency have been demonstrated by the 
happy and fruitful experience of many years in 
scores of industrial establishments of all sorts and 
sizes. The skepticism which is often expressed 
as to the practicability of this method is really 
a somewhat discreditable exposure of ignorance. 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 215 


After a piece of machinery has been at work for 
twenty years, smoothly, successfully, productively, 
in a great many different hands and upon a great 
many kinds of material, making a finer product 
than was ever made before, it is rather ridiculous 
to hear a man who never tried it and never saw 
it volunteer his opinion that it will not work. I 
have frequently been visited with the contempt, 
and sometimes with the commiseration, of so-called 
practical men, when I have ventured to suggest 
this method; they were ready to dismiss it at once 
as the dream of a theorist. “ What does a parson 
know,” they wanted to ask, “ about the manage¬ 
ment of business ? ” Waiving all dispute as to the 
parson’s “practical” wisdom, he is as fully quali¬ 
fied as any other man to see and report a simple 
historical fact. He may not know how to run a 
steam-engine, but he may be perfectly sure that 
there are many thousands of steam-engines in op¬ 
eration in various parts of the world, and that they 
are doing good work. That I could manage a 
hundred workmen in an industrial partnership I 
will not assert; but I do know that the thing has 
been done by a great many other men, and that 
the testimony of those who have tried it is almost 
unanimous, and very enthusiastic in its favor. 

A little book, published a few years ago in Eng¬ 
land by Mr. Sedley Taylor, contains much inter¬ 
esting information upon this subject. A much 
larger volume, lately published in this country by 
Mr. N. P. Gilman, greatly extends the information. 


216 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


It is upon the continent of Europe that this method 
has been most thoroughly tried, and most of Mr. 
Taylor’s and Mr. Gilman’s facts are drawn from 
France and Germany. To show you at the outset 
how much had been done at the time when the 
first-named book was written, let me quote : “ Put¬ 
ting together the most recent data, I shall be be¬ 
low the mark in saying that one hundred Conti¬ 
nental firms are now working on a participatory 
basis. The principle has been introduced with 
good results into agriculture ; into the administra¬ 
tion of railways, banks, and insurance offices ; into 
iron-smelting, type-founding, and cotton-spinning ; 
into the manufacture of tools, paper, chemicals, 
lucifer matches, soap, cardboard, and cigarette- 
papers ; into printing, engraving, cabinet-making, 
house-painting, and plumbing; into stock-brok¬ 
ing, bookselling, the iron trade, and haberdashery. 
This list does not profess to be anything like com¬ 
plete, but it will probably suffice for the purpose 
now in view. The establishments which it sum¬ 
marizes differ in size and importance as much as 
in the character of the industry which they pursue, 
from the paper-mills of M. Larouche Joubert at 
Angouleme, with their fifteen hundred workmen, 
to the establishment of M. Lenoir at Paris, with 
its fifty house-painters. I may add that the move¬ 
ment is making decided headway, a considerable 
number of houses having given in their adhesion 
during the last four years .” 1 This will indicate 
1 Profit Sharing in Industry, p. 39. 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 217 


that the thing which I am talking about is not in 
the clouds nor in the vapory brains of a few half- 
crazed doctrinaires, but that it stands on solid 
ground and has substantial results to exhibit. It 
shows, also, that the field in which this method has 
been put to the proof is already very broad; the 
notion that it is workable only in a few excep¬ 
tional industries is pretty well discredited by these 
figures. One or two recent volumes undertake to 
show the impracticability of profit sharing ; in one 
of them the surprising statement is made that sev¬ 
enty-five per cent, of such experiments have been 
failures. Mr. Gilman’s treatise, which is a most 
careful and exhaustive presentation of the facts, 
gives complete reports of 135 such enterprises now 
in operation, and mentions twenty-one others of 
which full reports could not be obtained; while 
the total list of those in which profit sharing has 
been tried and abandoned is only 36, and in nine 
of these, according to the testimony of the firms 
themselves, the principle was successful; the aban¬ 
donment of the experiment was due to no fault 
in the method. It would appear, therefore, that, 
so far as heard from, eighty-six per cent, of these 
enterprises have succeeded. A recent review of 
one of these hostile treatises concludes with the 
remark that the arguments of the book against the 
system are “ the more impressive ” because “ the 
author is a Fabian Socialist, with a strong bias 
against the wage system, and in favor of some 
form of socialistic production.” The innocence of 


218 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


this remark is engaging. It is much as if one 
should say of a temperance reformer, “ His condem¬ 
nation of High License is all the more impressive 
because he is known to be an ardent Prohibition¬ 
ist.” If there is any class of persons in the com¬ 
munity who are consistently and resolutely skepti¬ 
cal about industrial partnership, it is the Socialists ; 
not a few of the failures recorded in Mr. Gilman’s 
book are traced directly to the determined hostil¬ 
ity of revolutionary Socialists. In the words of 
Mr. Gilman, “ The comparatively modest scheme 
of participation in simple profits stands little 
chance of impressing workmen favorably when 
their minds are filled with ideas of a universal di¬ 
vision, or a common enjoyment of prosperity, under 
the name of Socialism.” The feeling of the aver¬ 
age Socialist, when profit sharing is proposed to 
him, is much like that of the Irishman just landed, 
who rebuked his friend for stooping to pick up 
a half-dollar on the wharf: “ Tush, man, let it 
alone ; a little beyant here ye ’ll shovel ’em up.” 
In audiences to which I have sought to commend 
this method of industry, I have invariably found 
Socialists the most unsympathetic listeners; they 
are quite apt to get up and stalk out of the house. 
The reason of this is, of course, their conviction that 
this simple remedy is ineffectual. Doubtless they 
are honest in this conviction, but their feelings are 
too much enlisted; they are not, as a rule, in a 
judicial frame of mind. The testimony of Social¬ 
ist writers concerning the failure of profit shar- 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 219 

ing enterprises is always to be taken with much 
caution. 

Mr. Macleod undertakes to show that there are 
two kinds of labor in commerce, one of which is 
necessary to produce the profit, the other of which 
is not. “ In a merchant’s office,” he says, “ or in 
a bank, the clerks, servants, messengers, porters, 
etc., contribute nothing to the success of the busi¬ 
ness. Such labor as theirs is subject to the sim¬ 
ple rule of Demand and Supply. They have no 
shadow of a claim to demand a share of the prof¬ 
its. ... So the servants of a railway company, 
engine-drivers, guards, porters, and clerks, contrib¬ 
ute nothing, to the success of the enterprise. . . . 
But the labor of operatives, miners, and artisans 
stands on a different footing altogether. Their 
labor, their skill, is indispensably necessary, and 
conduces directly to obtain the product and the 
profit. Their labor may justly be styled coopera¬ 
tive with that of the master; they are in reality 
quasi-partners with the capitalist in obtaining the 
profits, and without them the profits could not be 
made, and the master obtains a distinct profit out 
of the labor of such workmen which he can esti¬ 
mate in a very different sense to that of the labor 
of the other class. It is now pretty generally 
recognized that such workmen have an equitable 
claim to a certain share of the profit which is the 
result of the joint efforts of the master and work¬ 
men.” 1 The admissions of the last part of this 
1 Elements of Economics , ii. 204, 205. 


220 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


quotation are significant. That the labor of some 
laborers is “ cooperative with that of the master,” 
and that “ they are in reality quasi-partners with 
the capitalist in obtaining the profits,” is a some¬ 
what belated discovery of this school of economists; 
it ought to have a good deal of practical influence 
upon the distribution of wealth. The only weak¬ 
ness of this reasoning is the attempt to show that 
this principle holds in some industries, and not in 
others. Mr. Macleod asserts that in mercantile 
and financial operations the success of the business 
depends in no degree upon the employees. As a 
matter of fact, this method has been in use for a 
long time in mercantile houses; the remuneration 
of salesmen is generally conditioned in part upon 
the amount of their sales. Perhaps, however, Mr. 
Macleod did not intend to include salesmen among 
clerks. But the inaccuracy of what he says about 
financial houses is illustrated by one of the most 
conspicuous instances of industrial partnership, 
that of a great insurance company of Paris, which 
has now for forty years divided a portion of its 
earnings among the whole number of its employees 
of all grades, and which, up to 1885, had collected 
and distributed more than a million and a half of 
dollars in this way, in addition to the regular sala¬ 
ries and wages of its men. Bookkeepers, clerks, 
and all other servants of the company share in this 
dividend in proportion to their earnings, and the 
president of the company, M. de Courcy, wrote in 
1880 to Mr. Taylor: — 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 221 

“ Each year the company appreciates better what 
it gains in return for these sacrifices. My general 
principle is that there are no thoroughly satisfac¬ 
tory business transactions except those which are 
satisfactory to both the parties concerned. Experi¬ 
ence has justified our institution from both these 
points of view. It is excellent for the employees and 
excellent for the company.” 1 

This experience of forty years may, perhaps, 
outweigh Mr. Macleod’s dictum about the inappli¬ 
cability of this principle to financial houses. Mr. 
Gilman reports thirteen insurance and banking 
houses which are doing business by this method. 
What Mr. Macleod says about railway employees 
is even wider of the mark. The Paris and Orleans 
Railway has been operated on this basis since 
1844, and up to 1882 more than $12,000,000 had 
been paid over in profits to employees. The inter¬ 
vention of the state, with a guarantee of at least 
ten per cent, of addition to the annual wage of each 
employee, has checked somewhat the operation of 
this principle; but its excellent effect, through 
many years, upon the conduct of the servants of 
the company is matter of history. “The em¬ 
ployees,” says M. Charles Robert, “ mutually 
looked after each other. They had constantly in 
mind the thought of an eventual profit to be 
shared, of a possible loss to be avoided. Thus 
every one showed the greatest care in handling the 
passengers’ luggage; and if an employee handled it 
1 Profit Sharing in Industry, p. 83. 


222 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


unceremoniously, a comrade was not unfrequently 
heard saying to him, 4 What are you about ? You 
will shorten our dividend.’ I have these details 
from a witness of authority.” 1 Indeed, it is diffi¬ 
cult to think of any other industry to which this 
principle could be applied more effectively than to 
this great railway traffic. To say that “ the ser¬ 
vants of a railway company, engine-drivers, guards, 
porters, and clerks contribute nothing to the suc¬ 
cess of the enterprise,” is to exhibit an astonishing 
ignorance of affairs. On a recent visit to Chicago, 
I was met, on dismounting from the cab at the 
station of one of the great railways, by a porter, 
who relieved me at once of my hand-luggage, con¬ 
ducted my wife to the waiting-room, went with me 
to the office of the sleeping-car, and, while I was 
securing my berth, took my ticket and procured 
the check for my baggage, showed me the gate 
through which I should pass when my train was 
ready, and thus in the most polite and efficient 
manner attended to my comfort and put me at my 
ease; nor was there in his manner any suggestion 
of a fee. I am sure that if I ever have occasion 
to travel toward the Northwest again, I shall be 
strongly inclined to patronize that road. Whether 
this young man was interested in the profits of the 
road I do not know; but I do know that it is in 
the power of “guards ” (we call them conductors), 
“porters, clerks,” and other employees of a railway 
company to contribute very greatly to the comfort 
1 Profit Sharing in Industry , p. 84. 


RE OR GANIZA TION OF INDUSTRY. 223 


of passengers, to the popularity of the road, and 
thus to the success of the enterprise. And, so far 
as engine-drivers are concerned, it is not easy to 
exaggerate the extent to which the profits of the 
business depend on their cooperation. Not long 
ago, a practical railroad man, speaking without 
any thought of the question we are now consider¬ 
ing, showed how easy it was for the engineer of a 
switch-engine, in making up freight trains on the 
sidings, to destroy property by the hundred dollars’ 
worth, just through carelessness or ill-temper, by 
driving his cars together with a crash. The repair 
bills of most railroads are heavier in consequence 
of such recklessness or misconduct. And who can 
estimate the losses that are directly caused by the 
neglect or infidelity of railway employees! It may 
be said that the conscience of the employee should 
be a better safeguard against such injuries than 
his pecuniary interest, and I will not dispute that 
saying; but the problem is to bring his interest 
and his conscience more directly into line; to make 
his personal advantage more obviously identical 
with his duty to his employer. This is the prob¬ 
lem which industrial partnership is trying to solve; 
it proposes to supplement the cash nexus of the 
wage system with the bond of mutual interest. 

Three systems of participation in profits are 
practiced on the continent of Europe. One, the 
simplest, is like that which I have already described 
in the imaginary case. Another sets aside a share 
of the profits of the business annually for the 


224 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


employees, but, instead of paying it over to them 
at the end of the year, invests it at compound inter¬ 
est, and lets it accumulate until the employee has 
been for a certain number of years in the concern, 
or until he has reached a certain age. This system 
of deferred payment is the system of the insurance 
company of which I have spoken, and it has many 
advocates. But most of the participating houses 
combine these systems: part of the workman’s 
share comes to him as a cash bonus at the end of 
the year; part of it is invested for his benefit. 
Let me mention a few typical instances. 

M. Bord was a piano-maker in Paris, employing 
about four hundred men. In 1865 a strike in his 
establishment led to a treaty with his men, by 
which ten per cent, interest on his capital was to be 
drawn out of the profits every year by the employer, 
and the rest divided into two parts, one propor¬ 
tional to the amount already drawn as interest by 
the capitalist, the other proportional to the whole 
amount received as wages by the workmen. Each 
workman’s share of this dividend was proportional 
also to the wages earned by him during the year. 
In 1866, the sum divided among the workmen was 
$3,235 ; in 1882, it was $26,025. The ratio of the 
bonus to the annual wages for these seventeen 
years is about sixteen per cent. The total of 
bonuses paid up to 1883 was $257,883. For only 
one year, that of the Franco-Prussian war, did the 
dividend fail. An addition to his wages, at the 
close of the year, of a bonus amounting to one sixth 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 225 


of all lie had earned during the year would be 
regarded as a substantial gain by the average 
workingman; and this employer testifies that the 
arrangement is perfectly satisfactory to him in a 
pecuniary point of view, while “ the effect of the 
system in attaching the workmen to the house, 
and its influence on their relation to their em¬ 
ployer, are excellent.” 1 The death of M. Bord in 
1888 terminated this arrangement. 

The Maison Chaix is a great printing, publish¬ 
ing, and bookselling house of Paris, employing 
nearly one thousand hands. Every year, M. Chaix, 
the head of the house, sets aside fifteen per cent, 
of the net profits for those of his workmen who 
have been in his employ three years or more ; part 
of this is paid over to them in cash, and part put 
into a savings account on which inrerest is paid. 
The total amount allotted to them in ten years was 
about $130,000, of which $31,000 was paid over 
in cash bonuses. Annual meetings of the em¬ 
ployees are held, at which the employer explains 
the state of the business to them, and makes known 
the amount of their dividends. Reports of some 
of these admirable speeches are found in Mr. Tay¬ 
lor’s book. In his address to his people delivered 
in 1879, M. Chaix says: 44 In what concerns the 
execution of work in the workshops and the offices, 
I find around me such an amount of willing zeal 
that I give the main credit for this excellent state 
of things to profit sharing, and congratulate myself 
1 Profit Sharing in Industry , p. 31. 


226 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


more and more on having set that principle work¬ 
ing in this house.” 1 This is a business man, an 
employer, talking to his employees. Some other 
ideas besides competition and supply and demand 
seem to have got possession of his mind. 

MM. Billon et Isaac, manufacturers of music- 
boxes at Geneva, work on a different plan. They 
deduct from the profits of the year interest on 
capital and payments to the reserve fund, and then 
they divide the remainder into two equal parts, 
one of which goes to the owners, and the other to 
the laborers. But the laborers’ share is also divided 
into two equal parts, one of which is paid to them 
:? cash, and the other is invested in twenty-dollar 
shares of the company, which make them owners, 
entitle them to vote at the general meetings, and 
bring them annual interest. This has been in op¬ 
eration more than twenty years, in every one of 
which, except the year of the Russo-Turkish war, 
there has been a dividend, T T Vhie^ has^§ ra g e( ^ f° r 
the whole time, about fifteen pe± » ceni pf B ie an¬ 
nual wages. A letter from one of the workmen 
contains these words : “ The undersigned has been 
working for the last eight years in this factory ; 
. . . and he can testify that participation in profits 
has entirely altered the mode of life and habits of 
the workmen. Formerly, no one thought save of 
himself and of his individual interests ; quarrels 
about work were nothing out of the common way. 
Now, on the contrary, all consider themselves as 
1 Profit Sharing in Industry , p. 55. 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 227 

members of one and the same family, and the good 
of the establishment has become the object of every 
one’s solicitude, because our own personal interest 
is bound up with it. It is with pleasure that one 
remarks how each man strives to fill up his time 
with conscientious effort, to effect the utmost pos¬ 
sible saving in the materials, to collect carefully 
the fallen chips of metal; and how, if one or other 
now is guilty of some negligence, a joking remark 
from his neighbor suffices to bring him to order 
again.” Seventy of the employees of this estab¬ 
lishment in 1871 signed a letter of which this is a 
part: “ The workman, having the same interests 
as his employers, and perceiving that he is no 
longer treated like a machine, works with energy 
and courage; our hearts are warmed and cheered 
by contact with those of our employers who are 
always ready to set us a good example.” 1 The 
employer is equally enthusiastic. In 1880, he 
writes thus: “ After ten years of experience, we 
congratulate ourselves more and more on having 
adopted this principle. Its application has to such 
a degree become ingrained into our modes of doing 
business that we should not know how to get on 
without it. The management of an undertaking 
appears to us no longer possible without this ele¬ 
ment of justice, harmony, and peace.” 2 

There is one story more stirring by far than any 
I have told. It is the story of the Maison Leclaire, 
a great house-painting business established in Paris, 
1 Profit Sharing in Industry , p. 38. 2 Ibid. 


228 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


in 1842, on the participatory basis, by Edme-Jean 
Leclaire, one of the noblest of modern philanthro¬ 
pists. No profuse and careless almsgiver was this 
keen-witted Frenchman: he was a prosjjerous busi¬ 
ness man ; he left a snug little fortune of $240,000. 
But his ruling motive was his desire to improve the 
condition of the men in his employ. Ponder these 
words of his, written when death was near, and 
when, as he said, he felt sincerity to be more than 
ever a duty:— 

“ I believe in the God who has written in our 
hearts the law of duty, the law of progress, the law 
of the sacrifice of one’s self for others. I submit 
myself to his will; I bow before the mysteries of 
his power and of our destiny. I am the humble dis¬ 
ciple of Him who has told us to do to others what 
we would have others do to us, and to love our 
neighbors as ourselves : it is in this sense that I de¬ 
sire to remain a Christian until my last breath.” 1 

In this spirit he was pondering the case of his 
workmen in 1885, when an old philosopher named 
Fregier, listening to his queries, answered that he 
saw no way to get rid of the antagonism between 
workman and master except by the participation 
of the workman in the profits of the master. That 
seed fell into good soil; out of it sprang the Mai- 
son Leclaire, and the broadening harvest of parti¬ 
cipatory industries which are filling France with 
peace and plenty. This great house, whose work 
has been going on prosperously in the hands of 
1 Profit Sharing in Industry, p. 25. 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 229 

Leclaire’s successors since his death which oc¬ 
curred in 1872, employs more than a thousand 
men, transacts a business of more than $600,000 a 
year, and divides as bonus about $45,000 a year, 
which adds about one fifth to the wages of the men. 
The sum paid out of profits to the workmen, in ad¬ 
dition to their wages, from 1842 to 1882, amounted 
to $665,225. 

In Mr. Gilman’s list of 135 profit sharing firms 
now in successful operation only eight English 
firms are included. A later list, compiled in 1892, 
names 75 firms in Great Britain now working on 
this basis. This shows a very rapid extension of 
the system in England within the last five years. 

In our own country this participatory method has 
been in operation for many years with brilliant 
success in one industry, the fisheries of Massachu¬ 
setts. I have also statistics of thirty or forty man¬ 
ufacturing and mercantile establishments in this 
country which have adopted some form of parti¬ 
cipation. Several of them are among our most 
enterprising and successful concerns, such as the 
Pillsbury Mills, in Minneapolis; N. O. Nelson & 
Co., of St. Louis; the Bucyrus Foundry Co., in 
Ohio ; the Proctor and Gamble Co., in Cincinnati, 
Rogers, Peet & Co. and the Century Company, in 
New York; the Rumford Chemical Works, in East 
Providence, R. I. ; H. O. Houghton & Co., of the 
Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass.; the Spring- 
field Foundry Co., of Springfield, Mass.; the Ara 
Cushman Co., of Auburn, Maine; the Yale and 


230 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


Towne Manufacturing Co., of Stamford, Conn. ; 
Alf red Dolge & Co., of Dolge ville, N. Y.; Rand, 
McNally & Co., of Chicago ; John Wanamaker & 
Co. and the Public Ledger Co., of Philadelphia; 
the Toledo, Ann Arbor and Michigan Railway. 
Two other very important railways — the “ Big- 
Four ” system and the Cairo “ Short Line ” — have 
the matter under consideration. The workman’s 
share in the profits is in some of these concerns 
quite small; in others it is considerable. Some of 
the firms are able to add only three or four per 
cent, a year to the amount of their pay-roll; others 
have been able to increase the aggregate annual 
wage of their men by ten per cent., or even larger 
amounts. Mr. George W. Childs adds about ten 
per cent, to the wages of his printers ; Mr. Wana- 
maker distributes, according to a system of his 
own, bonuses and extra payments, amounting in 
1888 to about 1100,000 ; Proctor & Gamble have 
added from 9.33 per cent, to 13.47 per cent, to 
the wages of their men; and the Pillsburys have 
been able, in some years, to increase the stipend of 
their trusted men by as much as $400 to each one. 
Even the smaller percentages amount to quite as 
much, in most cases, as the net gains of strikes 
that are regarded as successful. If a company of 
workmen strike for ten per cent, increase of wages, 
and gain their point, the expense of the strike, in 
most cases, consumes more than half of the gain for 
a year to come. Five per cent, would, therefore, 
be the entire net gain. Is not a peaceful arrange- 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 231 

ment with the employer, by which even so small 
an increase as five per cent, of the annual wage is 
secured, greatly to be preferred to a strike which 
results in a nominal increase of ten per cent. ? It 
is only within the past four or five years that the 
system of profit sharing has been adopted to any 
extent in the United States. The tardiness of our 
people in making this experiment is not easily ac¬ 
counted for; it would seem that the first successes 
of this democratic idea should have been won upon 
our own soil. The recent labor troubles have 
opened the eyes of a great many persons to the 
need of discovering a better basis for industrial 
society, and quite a number of establishments have 
recently admitted the workmen to a limited partner¬ 
ship. We shall soon be able, therefore, to study 
at shorter range the operations of this method. 

The facts which I have already presented are 
sufficient, however, to convince any reasonable man 
that this system is practicable. It rests on no 
man’s conjectures; it stands on a solid basis of 
achievement. A committee of the French Parlia¬ 
ment, reporting on this system in 1882, bore this 
testimony : “ This application of a great principle 
has already passed beyond the region of mere 
theory, and has received in large measure the sanc¬ 
tion of experience. . . . Participation, under all 
the varied forms which it has assumed, can point 
to brilliant attained results.” 1 

The excellent report of the Massachusetts Bu- 
1 Profit Sharing in Industry, p. 48. 


232 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


reau of Statistics presents these among other car¬ 
dinal principles of industrial partnership : — 

“ Participation by workmen in profits, in addi¬ 
tion to wages, is a true harmonizer of the interests 
of capital and labor. It does, in fact, identify the 
interest of the employed with the interest of the 
employer. It converts the industrial association 
of employer and employee into a moral organism, 
in which all the various talents, services, and desires 
of the component individuals are fused into a com¬ 
munity of purpose and endeavor. 

“ The dividend to labor is not, usually, an in¬ 
crease of pay, services remaining the same, but a 
form of extra pay for extra services and an induce¬ 
ment calling them out. 

“ The extra services called out, and the manner 
of calling them out, constitute an invaluable educa¬ 
tional discipline. They develop the whole group of 
industrial virtues, diligence, fidelity, care-taking, 
economy, continuity of effort, willingness to learn, 
and the spirit of cooperation.” 1 

It is not the workingmen alone who will be the 
gainers by this reorganization of labor. To the 
employers the advantage will be quite as substan¬ 
tial. The peace thus won will be the handmaid 
of plenty. War is a costly business ; the saving 
of this increasing cost will be an enormous gain. 
And the removal of the causes of anxiety and 
irritation is also a result worth some expenditure. 
To one who is, by virtue of his calling, an ex- 
1 Report for 1886, p. 231. 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 233 


tremely “ unpractical ” man, it sometimes seems 
that if he were a “ practical ” man he would not 
try to run a complicated piece of machinery with¬ 
out adequate lubrication. The lubricating oil may 
be somewhat expensive, but is it not less expensive 
than frequent stoppages from hot journals, and 
the occasional burning down of your building 
from the same frictional inflammation ? I have a 
little book on this subject, in which it is shown 
that out of 575 fires in mills 37 per cent, were 
caused by friction and bad lubrication. Prudent 
mechanicians are not unwilling to incur the trouble 
and expense of adequate lubrication. And it 
seems to me that the social side of the machinery 
needs lubrication as well as the physical side. The 
very complicated mechanism of organized labor 
must be frequently and carefully oiled. The bear¬ 
ings will get hot, there will be frequent and costly 
stoppages and casualties, if care is not taken to 
avoid friction. What is wanted is the sweet oil of 
kindness, consideration, generosity, sympathy, on 
the part of the employer. Doubtless it costs some¬ 
thing to keep the machinery properly lubricated; 
it costs time and thought and patience, and some 
money ; but would it not pay ? 

Another important advantage to the employer 
is the enforced conservatism in the conduct of his 
business which the system demands. The reserve 
fund is an essential feature of this plan ; and the 
reserve fund will prove the salvation of the busi¬ 
ness in many a period of stringency. 


234 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


But best of all the fruits of this system will be 
the effect upon the character of the employer. 
The honest attempt to put this scheme into oper¬ 
ation will prove an “ invaluable educational dis¬ 
cipline ” to him. In him, also, it will develop a 
group of virtues, not identical with those named 
above which it tends to bring forth in the char¬ 
acter of the laborer, but virtues of great precious¬ 
ness, and virtues which unmodified competition 
does not cherish. Sympathy, consideration, the 
sense of stewardship, the responsibility of power, 
the chivalrous regard for those whom we are called 
to shelter and to serve, — all these fine qualities 
must surely be nourished in the heart of the em¬ 
ployer who earnestly endeavors to put his business 
on a participatory basis. He will unlearn any 
lordly or dictatorial ways that he may have fallen 
into; he will cease to think of the business as ex¬ 
clusively his concern, and will begin to regard it as 
the joint enterprise of the men who furnish the 
capital and the men who do the work; he will 
often, in his hours of thought, gather his helpers 
about him, and speak to them, not audibly with the 
lips, yet reverently in the heart, those words of a 
greater Master: “ Henceforth I call you not ser¬ 
vants; I call you friends.” 

For it is only when this spirit, or some measure 
of it, finds a place in the heart of the employer 
that this method of industry can be introduced 
with assurance of success. Mr. Taylor is right 
when he says that this is no “ self-acting panacea,” 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 235 

and that it can never be worked by men who care 
for nothing but money. No man whose only 
thought of his employees is how to get out of 
them the most work for the least wages will ever 
succeed with this method. Such a man will never 
succeed by any method in getting anything but 
the ill-will of his employees. The best fruits of 
participation, says Mr. Taylor, “ can be reached 
only by men who feel that life does not consist in 
abundance of material possessions, and who regard 
stewardship as nobler than ownership.” It is only 
in the spirit of Leclaire that the system of which 
he was the illustrious protagonist can be made to 
yield its largest benefits. 

Industrial partnership is simply the attempt to 
reorganize labor with some regard to the Christian 
law; its superiority to the unmodified wage system 
consists in the fact that it gives to Christian mo¬ 
tives larger room and freer play. 

It seems to me that we have come, in the evolu¬ 
tion of our industrial system, to the stage at which 
the general introduction of participation is expedi¬ 
ent and imperative. Such a concession as it re¬ 
quires capital cannot too speedily make; such a 
recognition of the dignity of labor as it involves 
the employing classes cannot too frankly utter. 
We shall not stop with this; we shall go farther; 
how much farther it is impossible to tell; but it 
will be wiser, I think, for the laboring classes not 
to be in haste, and it will be wiser for the employ¬ 
ing classes not to refuse the readjustments which 


236 


TOOLS AND THE MAN . 


will allay the present discontent. “A question 
arises here,” wrote Carlyle almost fifty years ago, 
“whether in some ulterior, perhaps some not far 
distant stage of this ‘Chivalry of Labour’ your 
master-worker may not find it possible and need¬ 
ful to grant his workers permanent interest in his 
enterprise and theirs. So that it becomes, in prac¬ 
tical result, what in essential fact and justice it 
ever is, a joint enterprise; all men, from the chief 
master down to the lowest overseer and operative, 
economically as well as loyally concerned for it.” 
Carlyle answered his own question rather dubi¬ 
ously. No man could answer it confidently whose 
detestation of democracy was as cordial as his. 
But to some of us it seems that the very terms in 
which his question is proposed contain the answer. 
If “in essential fact and justice” every industrial 
enterprise “ ever is a joint enterprise,” then it is 
certain in due season to become so. The essential 
fact and justice are going to get themselves rec¬ 
ognized and established in this world by and by. 
And the business of every Christian is to discern 
the essential fact and justice, to make his own con¬ 
duct conform to it, and to strive to get it recog¬ 
nized and established here in the world as speedily 
as possible. If we can only get these essential 
principles of Christianity rooted in the convictions 
of all classes, we may safely leave them to work 
out their own results. But it may be helpful to 
deduce a few inferential maxims of practical appli¬ 
cation. 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 237 


Employers must not forget that the large sys¬ 
tem of industry involves the association of men 
as capitalists and laborers — social organization , 
in fact; and all forms of social organization call 
for a large infusion of the altruistic element. So¬ 
ciety cannot be built on the basis of commercial 
contract. You who gather men together for these 
great industries have constant need to remember 
these words of Carlyle: “ Love of men cannot be 
bought by cash-payment; and without love men 
cannot endure to be together.” Somehow you 
must manage to supply that cement to the indus¬ 
trial society which you have organized. 

The old maxim noblesse oblige is binding upon 
the captains of industry. Because they have the 
superior intelligence and the natural gifts of 
leadership they must take the initiative in all 
plans for the reorganization of industry. Hear 
Carlyle again: “ The main substance of this im¬ 
mense problem of Organizing Labor, and first of 
all of managing the working classes, will, it is very 
clear, have to be solved by those who stand prac¬ 
tically in the middle of it; by those who themselves 
work and preside over work.” 

In the working out of these plans it will be 
necessary for employers to use great patience, to 
take their workmen into their confidence, and to 
explain very fully the nature of the partnership 
which they are forming. Bead the story of Jean 
Godin and his Familistere at Guise, and learn 
how this great-hearted employer met his workmen 


238 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


night after night for weeks, laying before them his 
plans for their welfare, discussing all the details, 
allaying their suspicions, and finally winning their 
consent to become partners with him in the great 
industry of which they will soon be the sole pro¬ 
prietors. The failure of these industrial partner¬ 
ships has often been due to the neglect of the 
employers to come to a good understanding with 
their workmen. The whole business has been man¬ 
aged at arm’s length; the concession was rather 
surlily offered at the beginning, never clearly ex¬ 
plained, and rather suspiciously accepted; there 
was fear on both sides of bad faith and overreach¬ 
ing. No partnership will thrive in such an atmos¬ 
phere. But those who approach the problem in 
the spirit and temper of Jean Godin will generally 
find that the solution is not impossible. 

The greatest opportunities of this generation, 
the opportunities of Christian leadership, of Chris¬ 
tian statesmanship, are offered to the employers of 
labor. They are called to moralize the industrial 
realm whose ruling law has hitherto been pagan. 
They are called to lead in that peaceful reconstruc¬ 
tion of our industries by which labor and capital 
shall be identified in interest and feeling, and peace 
shall be established among men. I believe that 
some of them have heard the call, and are rising 
to their opportunity. Kniglitlier work can no man 
do than that which awaits them. May God fill 
them with wisdom and courage and patience and 
love! 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 239 

There are one or two truths which workingmen 
also will do well to bear in mind. 

It must not be supposed that by any arrange¬ 
ments which men can make, industrial, economic, 
or political, the eternal laws can be circumvented. 
Men are not all alike. They differ vastly in en¬ 
dowment. The services that some men render to 
society are far greater than those rendered by 
others. Their reward ought to be and will be pro¬ 
portionately greater. It is a great service that any 
man renders to society who organizes and success¬ 
fully manages a great industry. It is a great ser¬ 
vice to the men employed ; probably not one in five 
of them, working as his own master, could secure 
as large a reward for his labor as he receives under 
the direction of this master. It is a great service 
to the community at large to have the aggregate 
product of industry enlarged and cheapened. “ The 
function of the man of business,” says one of the 
later economists, “ is essentially that of coordinat¬ 
ing the factors and processes of the economic world 
— labor, capital, invention, and superintendence in 
the factory, supply and demand in the market. 
Throughout organic nature, and no less in human 
society, the coordinating function is useful and 
costly compared with the mere expenditure of 
energy in direct and simple ways.” It is useful 
and it is costly. Great services deserve great re¬ 
wards. That is one of the eternal laws. Any 
socialistic scheme that ignores it will come to grief. 
Cooperation is industrial democracy, but democracy 


240 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


is not communism ; it implies leadership ; it argues 
that when factitious distinctions are swept away 
the natural leaders will come to the front. Shake 
apples in a basket and the biggest ones will rise to 
the top. That is the law of nature, and it will get 
itself enforced. “ All flesh is not the same flesh,” 
and all brains are not of the same size. And brains 
will tell. In all your thoughts about the new re¬ 
gime of industry, keep this in mind. 

Neither must it be imagined that any arrange¬ 
ment will ever be effected that will cancel the 
natural penalties of ignorance and indolence and 
improvidence. A large share of the misfortunes of 
the working classes arise from these sources. I 
know, for I have been working with them and for 
them for thirty years. Whatever the form of the 
industrial organization, it will always be true that 
for many workingmen reform must begin at home, 
in improved habits of industry, thrift, and sobriety. 

“ Cooperation,” as we have seen, “ awaits the 
advent of the cooperative man.” He is coming, 
but his coming can be hastened by cultivating a 
spirit of candor, moderation, and sweet reasonable¬ 
ness. Workingmen who would like to enter into 
partnership with their employer would do well to 
let him see that their temper is such as to promise 
pleasant and profitable relations. 

And now a final word that applies with equal 
force to employers and employed. Whether your 
place is at the lathe or in the counting-room, you 
are bound to consider, not your individual interest 


REORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY. 241 


alone, nor merely that of the corporation whose 
agent you are, nor merely that of the trades-union 
to which you belong, but also and always the in¬ 
terest of the whole community. “No man liveth 
unto himself! ” How much truer that is to-day 
than when it was written! “ Modern production 

is not an individualistic process, it is the act of 
society as a whole,” says a recent writer. We are 
all bound together in interest and welfare ; whether 
we will or no, the law of our civilization is, “ Each 
for all and all for each.” Every industrial war 
injures the whole commonwealth. We must learn 
to think of these inevitable and far-reaching effects 
of our conduct. It will not do for us to get into 
the habit of saying, “ This business is mine, and 
I propose to manage it to suit myself ; ” or to fall 
into the way of thinking that the little group of 
workers to which we belong contains the only 
people whose welfare is to be considered. We are 
members one of another, and we must think and 
act for the interest of all. That is the Christian 
way of thinking and acting, and when we all learn 
that way, we shall have reached the end of our cen¬ 
turies of strife, and have come to the beginning of 
the thousand years of peace. 


IX. 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 

We have been studying certain proposed modi¬ 
fications of the present industrial order, by which 
it is hoped that a greater identity of interest be¬ 
tween employer and employed might be secured. 
But there are many in these days who have no 
hope that the present industrial order can be im¬ 
proved, and who are of the opinion that the only 
thing feasible is to abolish it altogether. 

Of these there are several classes, which must 
be carefully distinguished. Socialists, Commu¬ 
nists, and Anarchists or Nihilists agree in their 
condemnation of the present system of industry, 
but are by no means at one in their theories of 
what should take its place. 

Communism is mainly a scheme for the better 
distribution of wealth; it cares less about how it 
is produced and fixes its attention on getting it 
evenly divided. Socialism is chiefly concerned 
about the production of wealth, and although it 
aims at lessening the inequalities which now exist, 
it does not usually insist on its being equally di¬ 
vided. Under Communism there is no private 
property ; under Socialism there might be private 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


243 


property, but could be no private enterprise. The 
industries of the land would be regulated, under 
Socialism, by the state ; every farm, every factory, 
every railroad, every mine, would be managed by 
the government. The proposition of Socialism is 
to extend the power of the state over all the pro¬ 
ductive and distributive industries of the nation; 
so that every man who works shall work for the 
state, and receive as his stipend, not money, for 
money under that regime would be impossible, but 
labor-checks entitling him to obtain in the govern¬ 
ment store houses a certain amount of goods. All 
these goods, produced by labor, would be valued 
by the amount of labor expended in producing 
them; therefore each man would directly exchange 
his labor for the products of other men’s labor, 
and the exchange would be made through the 
medium of the state. Such, in the barest out¬ 
line, is the socialistic scheme. It is evident that 
it could not be put into operation without a sweep¬ 
ing political revolution. Communism may exist 
under any form of government; it does exist under 
our government; the Shakers, the Iearians, the 
Zoarites, are all Communists. But Socialism could 
not come into full sway without a more tremen¬ 
dous social upheaval than ever yet took place in 
any civilized society. 

It may also be well to distinguish between 
Socialism and what is known as Nihilism or An¬ 
archism. The Anarchist denounces all govern¬ 
ment ; he wants to destroy the existing social and 


244 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


political order, root and branch, and leave every 
man free to do that which is right in his own eyes. 
He imagines that some sort of order would spring 
out of this chaos, but he neither knows nor cares 
what it would be. He is, therefore, theoretically 
at exactly the opposite end of the scale from the 
Socialist. The Socialist wants the government to 
do everything; the Anarchist wants the govern¬ 
ment to do nothing. Yet, wide apart as these two 
are in their theories, we sometimes find them act¬ 
ing together. Extremes meet. The Socialist is 
willing that the Anarchist should destroy the ex¬ 
isting order, so that he may build his own on its 
ruins. But just as soon as the present order was 
destroyed, the bitterest foe that the Socialist would 
have to fight would be the Anarchist. 

Anarchists are few, and Communists are few, 
but Socialists are many. “ Socialism,” says Pro¬ 
fessor Walker, u was never more full of lusty vigor, 
more rich in the promise of things to come than 
now.” The movement of thought in this direction 
has been very rapid during the last ten years. 
Nor is this scheme, which seems so audacious, so 
revolutionary, wholly the product of cranks and 
criminals; let no man imagine it. The philosophers 
of Socialism are men of deep insight and strong 
logic. Rodbertus, Marx, Lassalle, are thinkers 
and statesmen who need not stoop in the presence 
of the strong men of our time. And it cannot be 
denied that the movement of the leaders of opinion, 
of independent students of social science, has been 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


245 


for twenty years in the direction of Socialism. 
The word, indeed, has come to he a kind of cudgel 
with which disputants in the field of political sci¬ 
ence are wont to assail one another. Socialism, 
as we have seen, signifies the extension of the 
sphere of the state over the greater part of our 
industrial life. The strict disciple of laissezfaire 
regards every assumption by the state of power 
outside of its police function as a species of Social¬ 
ism. Whenever the state undertakes to do any¬ 
thing in the way of promoting the general welfare, 
it is following, say these philosophers, a social¬ 
istic tendency. With this definition most of us 
are Socialists. Prince Bismarck avows himself a 
Socialist and with some reason; in his insurance 
and pension schemes he has used the power of the 
state in a vigorous fashion to promote the welfare 
of the working classes. The Tory aristocrats of 
England, like Lord Shaftesbury, who secured the 
enactment of the factory legislation were, as Ar¬ 
nold Toynbee proves, a kind of Socialists. Mr. 
Herbert Spencer is not exactly a Socialist; he is 
rather more of an Anarchist, for he thinks that 
government is essentially and universally an evil; 
yet he denounces private ownership in land in 
words which, as Mr. Sidgwick says, make Henry 
George sound like a plagiarist. He demands that 
the government take possession of the land and 
hold it for the benefit of the whole people. So far 
he goes with the Socialists. In the main, however, 
he is the keen and relentless opponent of every- 


246 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


thing that savors of Socialism. Mr. Spencer is, 
indeed, the leader of a most formidable revolt 
against socialistic tendencies. A recent volume 
of essays entitled “ A Plea for Liberty,” to which 
Mr. Spencer contributes the introductory essay, is 
perhaps the strongest philosophical attack which 
has lately been made upon the main positions of 
the Socialists. 

We find, therefore, two pronounced schools of 
thought rapidly developing into parties, and the 
air is full of their fierce debate. After a little we 
shall be able, I trust, to see what hot partisans on 
either side are apt to forget, that social progress is 
always the resultant of two steadily acting tenden¬ 
cies, — the tendency to the perfection of the indi¬ 
vidual, and the tendency to the more perfect and 
harmonious cooperation of individuals; and that 
healthy progress is maintained only when both 
these tendencies are active and positive. Neither 
of these ends can be attained without the other. 
The individual cannot be perfected without a large 
and intelligent and hearty cooperation with the 
society in which he lives ; and society cannot be 
perfected without the development of the manhood 
of the individuals who compose it. Both these 
ends must be steadily held in view in all wise 
social construction. Neither must take precedence 
of the other; the one is just as important as the 
other. They have the same relation to the pro¬ 
gress of the race that the two wings of the bird 
sustain to its motion through the air. If either 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


247 


wing is broken or lamed, there is no such thing as 
flight; there may be much fluttering, but there is 
no escape from the earth, no progress through the 
air. And as a bird cannot fly without two wings, 
so the community cannot rise and advance without 
the integrity of the individual on the one hand, 
and the thorough identification of the individual 
with the life of his fellows on the other. 

That perverse habit of looking on one side of a 
question, which is the source of many of our social 
troubles, is strikingly illustrated in the way in 
which each of these complementary truths has 
gathered a party, which takes its formula for a 
watchword, and advocates it, as inconsistent with 
and hostile to the other. One who listens to these 
factions as they contend with each other wonders 
whether we may not some time have two parties, 
one of which shall maintain that hooks alone are 
useful, and that eyes are nugatory ; while the other 
will insist that hooks are superfluous, and that 
there is no utility in anything but eyes ; or whether 
there may not arise two schools of physiologists, 
one of which shall assert that the human body is of 
no importance; that all that is of value is the sep¬ 
arate parts and organs, — the head and the feet 
and the hands, the heart and the liver and the 
lungs, and so forth; while the other school main¬ 
tains that it is the body alone that is of conse¬ 
quence, and that the recognition of and the care 
for these separate parts and organs is unscientific 
and absurd. When in the evolution of intellec- 


248 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


tual freaks these controversies shall arise, those 
who witness them will be able to show that they 
are not exceptional monstrosities of one-sided theo¬ 
rizing ; that precisely the same kind of dispute 
was going on in the last part of the nineteenth 
century between the Individualists and the Social¬ 
ists. 

For the first three quarters of this century the 
prevailing social philosophy was individualistic; 
during the last quarter, thus far, the Socialists 
have had their innings, and they have made the 
most of it; the tendency, even among the scholars, 
to a socialistic interpretation of society has been 
very strong. With much of what the Socialists 
are saying, every philanthropist must be in closest 
accord. The criticisms which they have uttered 
upon the cruel and destructive tendencies of our 
industrial system have been timely and in great 
part true. That competition, when wholly unre¬ 
strained, must tend to make the rich richer and the 
poor poorer ; that the growth of a plutocracy at 
one end of the social scale and of a proletariat at 
the other are the natural and inevitable result of 
laissez faire , — all this is evident to-day, and the 
Socialists have helped to keep it before our thought. 
The growing chasm between employer and em¬ 
ployee ; the feverish condition of the industrial 
world ; the increasing frequency of depressions in 
trade, every one of which pushes a crowd of poor 
laborers into actual pauperism, — all these ominous 
signs, to which the Socialists keep pointing us, are 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


249 


evidence that something is wrong with the indus¬ 
trial machinery. So, at any rate, it looks to me. 
Yet I find Mr. Spencer and his friends denying 
that any such conditions exist. The working peo¬ 
ple, they say, are in far better case now than they 
ever were before. “ Any one,” says Mr. Spencer, 
“ who can look back sixty years, when the amount 
of pauperism was far greater than now and beg¬ 
gars abundant, is struck by the comparative size 
and finish of the new houses occupied by opera¬ 
tives, by the better dress of workmen who wear 
broadcloth on Sundays, and of servant girls who 
vie with their mistresses, — by the higher standard 
of living which leads to a great demand for the 
best qualities of food by working people; all re¬ 
sults of the double change to higher wages and 
cheaper commodities and a distribution of taxes 
which has relieved the lower classes at the expense 
of the higher classes.” 1 And one of Mr. Spen¬ 
cer’s associates, in the volume from which this is 
quoted, declares that the “ socialist declamation ” 
with respect to the growing misery of the working 
classes “ is only true, if true at all, of the lowest 
residuum, and [that] that residuum is no more 
than a fringe on the border of society in any coun¬ 
try where the capitalist is free.” 2 Here is a pretty 
serious question of fact. What Mr. Spencer says 
of the general elevation of the standard of living 
among the working classes is substantially true. 
There have been gains and great gains in the con- 
1 A Plea for Liberty, p. 3. 2 Ibid. p. 34. 


250 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


dition of the mass of wage-workers. But there are 
still two important questions not quite satisfac¬ 
torily answered. First, Have these gains been pro¬ 
portionate to the increase of the aggregate wealth 
of the community ? Second, Is it true that what 
Professor Graham calls the “ social residuum,” 
and what General Booth calls “ the submerged 
tenth,” is growing faster than the population ? It 
is impossible in this place adequately to discuss 
these questions. But I will venture to quote, as 
throwing light upon them, the words of Mr. 
Robert Gillen, the English statistician, whose 
calculations and conclusions with respect to the 
existing order have always been extremely opti¬ 
mistic. In an essay on “ The Gross and Net Gain 
of Rising Wages,” Mr. Giffen professes his faith 
that we shall see in the immediate future “ a con¬ 
tinuous improvement, on the average, of the hu¬ 
man being who really belongs to the new society.” 
But he makes this important concession: — 

“ The one doubtful sign, it appears to me, as 
regards the future, is pointed at by the qualifica¬ 
tion implied in the words, the human being who 
really belongs to the new society. It may proba¬ 
bly happen that there will be an increase, or at 
least non-diminution of what may be called the 
social wreckage. A class may continue to exist 
and even increase in the midst of our civilization, 
probably not a large class in proportion, but still 
a considerable class, who are out of the improve¬ 
ment altogether, who are capable of nothing but 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


251 


the rudest labor, and who have neither the moral 
nor the mental faculties fitted for the strain of the 
work of modern society. On the other side, as 
already hinted, the existence of what may be called 
a barbarian class among the capitalist classes, liv¬ 
ing in idle luxury and not bearing the burden of 
society in any way, seems also a danger.” 1 

There is, then, a serious “ social wreckage ” 
resulting from the swift relentless movement of 
modern society; it may be increasing, in spite of 
the enormous aggregate gains of material wealth 
and comfort. And one of the distinct purposes of 
Socialism, as I understand it, is to prevent this 
social wreckage. To this proposition Mr. Spencer 
and his school make answer, first, by denying that 
there is any such social wreckage, or at any rate 
that the amount of it is increasing; and in this 
answer I am persuaded that they are quite too 
optimistic. But, in the second place, they say to 
the Socialists, “ Even admitting the growth of the 
social residuum, your way of trying to check its 
growth would only increase its growth ; while your 
method of preventing social wreckage would result 
in stopping progress altogether.” And in this 
answer I think that they are partly right. But 
then, if they are pressed with the assertion that 
this increase of the social residuum is a terrible 
fact, and with the demand to know what they pro¬ 
pose to do about it, they answer, for substance, 
“We will do what we can, by alms, to relieve this 
1 The Contemporary Review , December, 1889. 


252 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


distress ; but we do not disguise from ourselves 
the fact that we cannot do much ; the only solu¬ 
tion is in the application of the law of the survival 
of the fittest; the people who have not the strength 
to catch hold of this swiftly moving industrial 
train and hold on may as well be dropped ; if they 
perish by the way, even in increasing numbers, 
they are only fulfilling the evolutionary law ; thus 
society sloughs off its waste material, and relieves 
itself of its incumbrances and goes forward the 
more swiftly in the path of progress.” 

This is, I think, a consistent and logical answer. 
It is the legitimate outcome of the doctrine of 
laissez faire. It is the natural fruit of Cain’s 
philosophy, “ Am I my brother’s keeper ? ” It is 
not, however, the Christian way of looking at the 
social problem. It is as far from Christianity, its 
sentiments, and its principles of action, as the east 
is from the west. The effect which the adoption 
of this method would have upon society may be 
easily conjectured. It might, very likely, add tem¬ 
porarily to its material wealth. The extermination 
of the weak and the dependent should result in 
a great increase of productive energy. But the 
simultaneous paralysis or atrophy of the instincts 
of compassion, of the sentiments of kindness and 
charity, would bring about a state of society in 
which even these strenuous individualists would, I 
think, soon find themselves uncomfortable. It is 
evident that social gains of this description might 
be purchased at too great a cost. For we must 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


253 


not forget that we are not only wealth-producing 
and wealth-consuming creatures, that we are also 
human beings, and that with all our gettings we 
must not lose our humanity. It is largely because 
these keen individualists seem to place too little 
emphasis upon this cardinal fact that we are disin¬ 
clined to follow them. Even among the disciples 
of this school there are some who begin to shrink 
from the unsocialism to which its teachings lead. 
Professor Sidgwick is, perhaps, the ablest living 
expositor of the Ricardian economy, and he is 
frank enough to admit its immoral tendencies. 
“For instance,” he says, “we should consider it 
extortionate in a boatman who happened to be the 
only man able to save valuable works of art from 
being lost in a river to demand for his services a 
reward manifestly beyond their normal price — that 
is, beyond the price which, under ordinary circum¬ 
stances, competition would determine at that time 
and place. Still, it is by no means clear that such 
extortion is 4 contrary to the principles of Political 
Economy/ as ordinarily understood. Economists 
assume in their scientific discussions — frequently 
with more or less approval of the conduct assumed 
— that every enlightened person will try to sell his 
commodity in the dearest market; and the dearest 
market is, ceteris paribus, wherever the need for 
such commodity is greatest.” And then this emi¬ 
nent economist proceeds, in sober words to which I 
beg to call your very careful attention : “ A consid¬ 
eration of facts like these leads us naturally to the 


254 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


widest and deepest question that the subject . . . 
suggests, whether, namely, the whole individualistic 
organization of industry, whatever its material ad¬ 
vantages may be, is not open to condemnation as 
radically demoralizing. Not a few enthusiastic 
persons have been led to this conclusion, partly 
from the difficulty of demonstrating the general 
harmony of private and common interest . . . partly 
from an aversion to the antisocial temper and at¬ 
titude of mind, produced by the continual struggle 
of competition, even when it is admittedly advan¬ 
tageous to production. Such moral aversion is 
certainly an important, though not the most power¬ 
ful, element in the impulses that lead thoughtful 
people to embrace some form of Socialism. And 
many who are not Socialists, regarding the stim¬ 
ulus and direction of energy given by the existing 
individualistic system as quite indispensable to 
human society as at present constituted, yet feel 
the moral need of some means of developing in 
the members of a modern industrial community a 
fuller consciousness of their industrial work as a 
social function, only rightly performed when done 
with a cordial regard to the welfare of the whole 
society, or at least of that part of it to which the 
work is immediately useful.” 1 

Here, now, is a fact on which Mr. Giffen’s fig¬ 
ures and Mr. Atkinson’s graphic tables throw no 
light whatever, and yet it is by far the deepest and 
most important fact of the whole discussion. No 
1 Principles of Political Economy , pp. 585-590. 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


255 


matter what the material gains of the present age 
may be, if the moral outcome of the competitive 
system is what Mr. Sidgwick says it is ; if the ten¬ 
dency of all our schooling in trade and business is 
to make us heartless and unscrupulous and careless 
of the welfare of our fellow-men, — to breed a race 
of strong, fierce, unmoral materialists, whose gains 
are gotten by despoiling their fellows, — then the 
present system is doomed ; and the more rapid its 
growth has been, the speedier and the more disas¬ 
trous will be its downfall. When there is no 
consciousness in the members of the industrial com¬ 
munity that their work is a social function, only 
“ rightly performed when done with a cordial re¬ 
gard to the welfare of the whole society; ” when, 
instead of this, they adopt the maxim of individu¬ 
alism, so succinctly expressed by Professor Sumner, 
that “ the supreme result of modern society is to 
guarantee to every man the use of all his powers 
exclusively for his own benefit,” then confusion and 
strife and every evil work must certainly increase 
and abound. It is this Unsocialism , fierce and 
cruel, as Professor Sidgwick says, that has given 
rise to Socialism. The doctrines of Winkelblech 
and Rodbertus, of Robert Owen and Lassalle, are 
in large part the reaction of a scourged and out¬ 
raged humanity against the greed and rapacity of 
the individualistic regime. 

Partly, then, because of the social wreckage 
which, under the present system of industry, seems 
to be increasing, and partly because of the unsocial 


256 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


tempers which, are generated by it, many of us are 
strongly inclined to listen to the Socialists when 
they come preaching a new dispensation. And it 
is a very engaging gospel which we hear from their 
lips. Poverty is to be abolished; there is to be 
work for all and all are to be required to work, and 
all will earn by their work an ample livelihood; 
the feud of rich and poor will come to an end; 
peace and plenty will fill the earth. And there 
shall be no more curse; the egoistic impulse will 
have spent its force ; good-will will rule instead of 
greed: — 

“ The crown of the getter shall fall to the donor, 

And last shall be first while first shall be last, 

And to love best shall still he to reign unsurpassed.” 

This is what we are waiting for; if the Socialists 
can assure us of it, they shall have our suffrages. 
But we have a right to demand clear evidence 
of their power when thus they offer us the king¬ 
doms of this world and their glory. Especially 
when they speak in the name of science are we en¬ 
titled to subject their schemes to a rigid scrutiny. 
And this is the claim of the recent Socialism. It 
professes to give us a reasoned philosophy of soci¬ 
ety; it undertakes to demonstrate that its pro¬ 
gramme is in harmony with the natural laws of the 
social order. 

It is precisely here that our faith meets its first 
and severest shock. Whatever else modern Social¬ 
ism may be, it is not scientific. Its reasonings 
about the facts of the social order are not sound 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


257 


reasonings. Its account of what is taking place in 
the industrial world is not a true account. What 
is the scientific basis of modern Socialism ? Let 
Professor Graham make answer: “ The theory 
of value, in the hands of Karl Marx, is in fact 
almost the whole of Socialism. According to Dr. 
Schaeffle, the most candid as well as the keenest 
critic of Socialism, the theory is in the strictest 
sense the basis of Socialism.” I have referred, in 
a former chapter, to the theory of Marx, and have 
endeavored to show its unsoundness. This theory 
is that labor is the source of all value ; that all 
the wealth in the world is due to labor. There is 
no time here to deal with this fundamental fallacy, 
but any one who will carefully study the question 
in the light of all the recent economic investiga¬ 
tion will very speedily find out that the theory is 
groundless. I may not assume to be an authority 
in economics, but I will offer three or four wit¬ 
nesses, all of whom are men who strongly sympa¬ 
thize with the purposes of the Socialists. 

The first shall be Professor Smart, of Glasgow: 
“ Taking its stand on one part of the Ricardian 
theory of value, and ignoring the other, [Socialism] 
writes out its economic system from the fundamen¬ 
tal proposition that labor is the sole source of 
value. . . . The indefensible point of this is, of 
course, its account of value. . . . The 4 value ’ of 
economic science must be what men call and think 
and. will recognize as value, and not what it would 
suit the theorist to call value. . . . Value is not the 


258 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


easy thing it is in socialist theory. Its origin and 
measure are not decided by the consideration that 
labor rightly applied can produce valuable things. 
Labor expended is merely the symptom that value 
is expected, not its cause. What we can say is 
that labor is economically employed when making 
valuable things. What we must deny is that any 
amount or kind of human labor will give value to 
what the world, as we know it, does not wish and 
will not have.” 1 

The second witness is Professor Naquet, of 
Paris: “The first objection that may be raised 
against the conclusions of Karl Marx rests on his 
theory of value, which is totally unscientific. Ac¬ 
cording to Karl Marx, an object is strictly worth 
what it has cost to produce, and is worth nothing 
more. This conception is absolutely erroneous. 
The cost of production, if it enters as an element 
in the fixing of value, does so only in a subsidi¬ 
ary manner, simply as a matter of consequence, 
and leaves the chief and fundamental place to 
utility.” 2 

And Professor Naquet goes on to show how ob¬ 
jects on which no labor has been expended possess 
great value, and how other objects on which great 
labor has been expended possess no value at all. 

My third witness shall be Emile de Laveleye, the 
eminent Belgian economist: “The fundamental 
error of Marx lies in the idea he conceives of value, 

1 Annals of the American Academy, vol. iii. pp. 4, 5. 

2 Collectivism, p. 10. 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM . 


259 


which, according to him, is always in proportion 
to labor. . . . Beyond question labor is an essential 
element of value, but whenever society, that is to 
say, natural or social monopoly, intervenes — and 
when does it not ? — labor is not the sole element. 
... In fine, we may say that the mighty and pre¬ 
tentious attempt of Marx to overturn the founda¬ 
tions of existing society, while relying on the very 
principles of Political Economy, has failed because 
he has only strung together a number of abstract 
formulas, without ever going to the root of things.” 1 

My fourth witness shall be Professor Graham, of 
Dublin, who, after a long and careful analysis of 
the doctrine in question, concludes : “ Thus, then, 
the Marxian theory of value and theoretical basis 
of Socialism is vicious as a theory and inapplicable 
in practice. ,r 2 

It is hardly necessary to multiply authorities. 
It is sufficient to say that the great majority of 
modern economists — those who are most strongly 
inclined to find some better way of organizing so¬ 
ciety than the present way — are agreed that the 
account which Marx has given of the present in¬ 
dustrial order is not a true account. The funda¬ 
mental trouble with Scientific Socialism is that it 
is unscientific, that it does not clearly understand 
and explain existing facts. And when we find 
that a man does not understand the present, we 
are not strongly inclined to take his word about 

1 Socialism of To-Day , pp. 34-39. 

2 Socialism New and Old , p. 212. 


260 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


the future. If the things that are going on before 
his eyes are not clear to him, how can we be sure 
that the untried scheme which he commends to us 
will work in the way he expects it to work ? Such 
is the fundamental difficulty which we encounter 
when we begin to examine critically the theories 
of the Socialists. And as we pursue our studies 
the difficulties multiply. Let us mention a few of 
them. 

The radical difficulty with Socialism in a scien¬ 
tific point of view lies in the fact that it under¬ 
rates the functions of mind in production. When 
Socialists say that all value is the product of labor, 
they generally mean muscular labor, or else they 
insist that mental labor shall be reduced to the 
terms of muscular labor. Rodbertus says that 
labor is the only productive agent and the only 
source of value, and although he includes under 
this term intellectual as well as physical labor, he 
goes on to say that physical labor is immediately 
productive, and should therefore receive a share in 
direct distribution, while intellectual labor is medi¬ 
ately productive, and is entitled to share in deriva¬ 
tive distribution. Now all labor is partly physi¬ 
cal and partly intellectual. The difference between 
skilled and unskilled labor is that the one calls into 
action more intellect than the other. But according 
to this definition the more skill there is in labor, 
the less “ immediately ” productive it is and the 
less “ directly ” it should share in the gains of indus¬ 
try. According to this theory, also, the work of the 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


261 


master builder who organizes and directs the labor 
of a hundred men is less immediately productive, 
and less entitled to a share in direct distribution, 
than that of the hod-carrier whom he employs. I 
think that this is scientifically inaccurate, — almost 
absurd. 

The two great facts of the present industrial 
era are organization and invention. These are the 
triumphs of mind, and to neither of these do the 
socialistic philosophers do justice. 

The modern method of industry requires that 
production be carried on upon the large scale. In 
great establishments, where many workmen are 
assembled, where labor is subdivided and com¬ 
bined with the most comprehensive wisdom, the 
mechanical work of the world is now mainly done. 
The success of this labor depends on its being 
wisely organized and directed. It will not organize 
itself. The laborers have not, thus far, proved 
themselves capable of organizing and directing 
their labor successfully. We may hope that they 
will come to that by and by, but they have not 
reached it yet. Now the value of the things pro¬ 
duced by the mass of laborers — their utility and 
their exchangeability — depends largely on the in¬ 
telligence by which the labor that produces them 
is organized and directed. This organizing and 
directing intelligence is a great factor in produc¬ 
tion ; it is entitled, then, to a liberal reward for 
the service which it renders to labor. And, as a 
matter of fact, it is this intelligence that reaps the 


262 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


principal reward. It is not capital, it is manage¬ 
ment that is carrying off the prizes to-day from 
the fields of industry. If the manager has capital 
of his own, he may use it profitably, but it is the 
management more than the capital that gives him 
success. Many of the great captains of industry 
hire their capital and pay low rates of interest for 
it, then hire their labor and make large profits on 
that. The capital gets small returns; the lion’s 
share goes to the manager for earnings of manage¬ 
ment. Now I think that this manager might well 
be content, in many cases, with smaller gains, but 
I know not how he can be prevented from receiv¬ 
ing a large reward, nor do I see any reason why 
he should be. The supremacy of mind is a great 
fact; I do not know how we are going to get rid 
of it. We had better not try to get rid of it. It 
is much better to seek in every possible way to put 
ourselves in possession of the mental equipment 
which gives power. If the laboring classes want 
a large share in the product of their own industry, 
let them seek the intelligence that will qualify them 
to organize and manage their own industry. That 
will give it to them, and nothing else ever will. 

The other great fact of modern industry is 
invention, and this is a fact which the socialistic 
philosophers do not seem at all to comprehend. 
What they have to say about machinery shows 
that they totally misconceive the whole case. Ma¬ 
chinery, Rodbertus says, is simply intensified labor. 
“All implements,” he reasons, “are vorgethane 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


263 


Arbeit , labor already performed, accumulated labor. 
When a person uses an implement in a productive 
operation, he is calling out actively the labor of 
the present and of the past. The prehistoric man 
first increased the efficiency of his labor. He then 
had time left, after satisfying his wants, which he 
devoted to the making of his first tool. Produc¬ 
tion in all its stages is only a repetition of this 
process.” That is to say the machine, when it is 
completed, represents simply the labor of the ma¬ 
chinists who made it. That is his theory. It rep¬ 
resents much more than this. It represents the 
thought of the inventor. The machine is organized 
intelligence, intelligence expressed in terms of phy¬ 
sical force. The mind of the inventor is incorpo¬ 
rated in its structure. Through this machine the 
mind of the man who conceived it lays hold on 
some kind of natural force, gravitation, heat, elec¬ 
tricity, and harnesses it and subdues it to the ser¬ 
vice of man. “I have found out,” the inventor 
says, “ a way by which the powers of nature may 
be made to work for your benefit.” Society thinks 
it wise to encourage such discoveries, and therefore 
gives this inventor control, for a space, of his own 
invention. Any one who uses his machine or his 
process must pay him for it. Part of the product 
of the machine goes to the laborer who operates it, 
part to the manager of the business who owns it, 
part as royalty to the inventor and his heirs. The 
right of inventive mind to receive a reward for the 
service which it renders to society is thus recog- 


264 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


nized by the state. The state is the gainer by this 
concession. Perhaps when the social state gets 
itself organized, inventors will be allowed no such 
rights. This is probable, for I have never found 
in any socialistic theory any recognition of the 
justice of such a claim. If that is the policy of 
the social state, it is doubtful whether there will 
be many inventors. 

This, then, is the first criticism that I have to 
make upon Socialism as a social theory. It ignores 
or depreciates the function of mind in production, 
— the organizing mind and the inventive mind. 
It puts muscle above mind, and brawn above brain. 
That is not civilization, that is barbarism. 

The second difficulty with Socialism is practical 
rather than theoretic. The theory that it pro¬ 
poses is too vast for human power. The nation¬ 
alization of all our industries is its programme. 
That is to say, it requires the state to take posses¬ 
sion of all the lands, the mines, the houses, the 
stores, the railroads, the furnaces, the factories, the 
ships, — all the capital of the country of every de¬ 
scription. Officers of the state will organize and 
direct all these industries; will tell the farmers 
what and how much to plant, and the miners what 
their output shall be, and the manufacturers of all 
sorts what and how much they shall produce. A 
vast army of statisticians will be kept at work dis¬ 
covering what are the needs of the people, and the 
laboring masses will be employed in producing the 
goods that will supply these needs, and in trans- 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


265 


porting them to the places where they are needed, 
and in storing them, and distributing them to those 
that need them. What an enormous undertaking 
it must be to discover all the multiform, the in¬ 
finite variety of wants of sixty millions of people, 
and to supply all these wants, by governmental 
machinery! What a tremendous machine a govern¬ 
ment must be which undertakes, in a country like 
ours, to perform such a service as this! The first 
thing it has to do is to discover some rule for the 
remuneration of labor. It has undertaken to sup¬ 
ply every one with work, and it must know how to 
pay its workmen. First, it must fix what it calls 
a normal working day. Rodbertus, curiously, 
thought it should be ten hours long; most of his 
modern disciples think that too long. Then it 
must calculate, in every calling, how much a nor¬ 
mal day’s work would be. Actuaries and experts 
must figure up exactly how much a man ought to 
do in a day, in every conceivable branch of indus¬ 
try; in the carpenter’s trade, for instance, how 
many feet of pine lumber a man should plane in a 
day; how many yards of three-inch flooring he 
should lay down; how many mortises and tenons 
of such and such sizes he should make, and every 
detail of the carpenter’s business must be reduced 
to a tabular statement, so that a man could tell, on 
figuring up at night, whether he had done a nor¬ 
mal day’s work or not. Could any such tabulation 
be made ? They say that a man by the name of 
Peters actually did it, for the carpenter’s trade, 


266 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


at the instance of Rodbertus; but nobody knows 
whether his tables were accurate or not, nor how 
they would have worked in actual practice, for no¬ 
body ever tried them. But imagine the difficulty 
of reducing every sort of labor to scale in this way. 
Possibly it might be done in the carpenter’s trade, 
yet how could it be done ? for in every job there 
are new operations, such as never were performed 
before. And in multitudinous callings the con¬ 
ditions vary so greatly, the things to be done are 
changing so constantly, that the attempt at such a 
calculation would be preposterous. 

Yet the whole socialistic scheme depends on mak¬ 
ing some such tabulation as this for every calling. 
It looks to me like an impossible undertaking. 
Nothing short of omniscience could compass it. 

Marx proposes, instead of this, to fix, as the 
standard, common unskilled labor, like that of a 
man digging dirt; and then all kinds of skilled 
labor are to be regarded “as multiplied skilled 
labor, a given quantity of skilled labor being con¬ 
sidered equal to a greater quantity of unskilled 
labor.” But this standard who shall fix ? And 
then how shall we reduce the various kinds of 
skilled labor to the standard ? Professor Graham 
asks these pertinent questions : “ Confining our¬ 
selves in particular to the different kinds of labor 
in the factory, all of which are above this unskilled 
labor, how are we to reduce them ? We must first 
reduce the labor of the ordinary operative to it. 
But by what rule ? How much is it to be rated 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


267 


above average labor? Then comes the skilled 
labor of the manual sort; this has to be reduced 
to average labor. Is it to be twice or thrice, and 
why ? Then, where intelligence is of importance, 
how is the labor into which it enters to be expressed 
in terms of average labor ? — the labor, e. g., of the 
foreman and overseer, or of the clerks who must 
correspond in foreign languages, or finally of the 
owner or manager, whose work in organizing or 
directing is altogether intellectual or moral ? And 
yet all these laborers are required to produce the 
final thing, or, what is equally necessary, to find a 
market. All the labor must be rated in hours of 
common or average labor, or we cannot tell what 
it is worth on Marx’s principle; and if we do not 
know its value, we cannot tell the value of a given 
portion of the product, nor by consequence how 
much of it the different workers can get in ex¬ 
change for their certificates for hours of work.” 1 
It is the stupendous difficulty of making any such 
computations and reductions that has driven some 
of the Socialists, Mr. Bellamy, for example, to 
adopt the communistic principle of distribution — 
giving to every person an exactly equal income. 
But that principle violates the eternal law of justice 
— “ to every man according to his work.” I do 
not believe that any society will very long endure 
which ignores this law. To say that the veriest 
idler and shirk, who spends most of his time in 
evading work and in sponging upon his neighbors, 
1 Socialism New and Old , p. 194. 


268 TOOLS AND THE MAN. 

shall have exactly the same reward that is given 
to the most industrious, the most skillful, the most 
public-spirited citizen, is to confound every prin¬ 
ciple of equity and turn the moral order upside 
down. The universe is not built on that plan. 

But having achieved the impossible task of de¬ 
vising a rational and scientific method of distribut¬ 
ing the wages of labor, the next thing to do is to 
find out exactly what everybody in this whole 
country wants of everything, and how much of it; 
and then to set the workmen at work to raise it or 
manufacture it. What an amazing proposition! 
What a stupendous machine, I repeat, the gov¬ 
ernment must be, to which such a task could be 
committed! Is it not evident that it would be 
crushed by its own weight ? 

Even if the mental power to frame such a gov¬ 
ernmental machine were available, we may rea¬ 
sonably fear that the moral integrity requisite for 
its operation is yet wanting. Such a government 
would require a civil service a good deal better 
than ours is or soon will be. “ In order to be suc¬ 
cessful,” says Herbert L. Osgood, “ the socialistic 
state would require a standard of public and pri¬ 
vate morality far above the average attained in 
our best communities to-day. Official life must 
be freed from all corruption, from all tendencies 
to self-seeking, self-indulgence, or greed. Party 
government would have to undergo important re¬ 
strictions and limitations. Patriotism must exist 
among the people to a degree now realized only by 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


269 


a few during a great national struggle for liberty. 
The average man must be so highly developed 
morally that he will be ready to sacrifice personal 
gain and enjoyment for the good of the community. 
To this age, a system with such requirements can 
be only a dream, an aspiration.” 

So, indeed, Rodbertus said. He was wiser in 
this, as in most things, than many of his succes¬ 
sors. The first philosopher of modern Socialism, 
he was the greatest of them all. He thought that 
the world must wait at least five hundred years for 
the advent of the socialistic commonwealth. 

But will it not, at length, come true, this dream 
of the great-hearted philosopher ? Doubtless, as 
Cooperation must await the development of the 
Cooperative Man, in like manner Socialism must 
await the development of the Social Man. But 
have we not a right to look for him? Is not his 
day coming, by and by ? 

Doubtless the progress of the human race will 
be in this direction. Men will learn, more and 
more, as Mr. Sidgwick says, to consider their in¬ 
dustrial work, whatever it is, as a social function 
only rightly performed when the interests of their 
associates, and of society at large, are cordially 
regarded. Men will become more and more will¬ 
ing to sacrifice personal gain and enjoyment for 
the good of the community. If there is any such 
thing as human progress, it lies in this direction. 
May we not, then, expect that the hopes of the 
Socialists will one day be realized ? Possibly, yet 


270 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


I doubt it. When the Social Man arrives, I doubt 
if he will be a Socialist. When the Millennium 
comes, I do not believe that Karl Marx will be rec¬ 
ognized as its prophet. And my reason for this 
disbelief brings me to the last of my criticisms upon 
Socialism, — that it undervalues character. Its 
main interest is creature comfort. A better distri¬ 
bution of the good things of this life is what it is 
after, mainly. Of course, it attacks the vices of 
the present competitive regime, yet chiefly because 
they hinder the prevalence of plenty. 

I quite agree with the Socialists in their indig¬ 
nant repudiation of that doctrine of laissez faire 
which forbids the strong to help the weak, and 
substitutes the law of natural selection for the law 
of philanthropy. Doubtless there are duties that 
All-of-us owe to The-weakest-of-us ; and noblesse 
oblige will never cease to bind the hearts of God’s 
nobility. But the problem in all this philanthropy 
is to help men just enough, and not too much; to 
help them in such a way as to stimulate their self- 
respect and strengthen their manhood. We may 
lift the impotent man to his feet; but it is best 
to say to him then what St. Peter said, “ Silver 
and gold have I none ; ” go to work now, and earn 
them for yourself. 

Now Socialism is a natural and justifiable revolt 
from the unsympathy and hardness of laissez 
faire , and it flies to the opposite extreme, as all re¬ 
actions do. It undervalues self-help as much as 
the old regime has overvalued it. The old econ- 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


271 


omy insisted that nothing should be done for any¬ 
body ; Socialism is inclined to demand that every¬ 
thing shall be done for everybody. The old system 
left a multitude to be crushed under burdens that 
they could not carry; Socialism takes away the 
burdens that are necessary for the development of 
strength. 

Socialism undertakes to furnish every man with 
work. It undertakes too much. It removes from 
the individual the responsibilities and cares by 
which his mind is awakened and his will invigor¬ 
ated. 

Not only would it weaken him by taking off the 
pressure of needs that proves so good a discipline, 
it would cripple him by limiting in a thousand ways 
his liberty. M. Godin, in his 44 Social Solutions,” 
quotes from some socialistic philosopher of the 
early period his programme of the social order : — 

44 The constitution and laws regulate all that con¬ 
cerns the citizen ; — his actions, his property, food, 
clothing, lodging, education, work, and even his 
pleasures. 

44 The aliments are regulated or prohibited by 
the law; also the number of repasts, their time, 
their duration, the number of dishes, their kind and 
the order of their service. 

44 All are clothed, nourished, and lodged the same. 
The republic cultivates and produces all the ali¬ 
ments. 

44 The law determines the trades and professions 
to be exercised and all the articles to be manufac- 


272 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


tured; no other industry is taught or tolerated, as 
no other fabrication is permitted. 

“ All the houses are on the same model. The 
law determines the number and the style of all the 
furniture of each house.” 1 

It is not customary for socialistic philosophers 
to be so explicit as this ; and we may easily admit 
that this one has carried his passion for equality to 
an extreme statement; yet the probability that a 
national system of production and distribution 
would result in the enforcement of some such uni¬ 
formities as these, and therefore in the most care¬ 
ful inspection and regulation of all our lives, is not 
to be gainsaid. To most of us this would prove 
somewhat burdensome. The interest of your 
neighbors in your affairs is one of those good 
things of which there may easily be too much. 
Who would wish to live in a society in which 
everybody’s conduct was everybody’s business ? 
Personality has its own domain, within which in¬ 
trusion is intolerable, and it is wider than Social¬ 
ism allows. And I suspect that many an honest 
workingman, growing restive under the restraint 
and espionage thus imposed, would be heard cry¬ 
ing out, “You have given me bread, but you have 
taken away my manhood. I can live on a crust 
and water, but give me liberty or give me death.” 

In short, it seems to me, as I try to study out the 
socialistic programme, and to see what its actual 
workings would be, that it exaggerates the prin- 
1 Page 37. 


SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 


273 


ciple of solidarity as much as the old regime exag¬ 
gerates the principle of liberty. It might increase 
the aggregate amount of wealth, though I doubt it; 
it might distribute what was produced more evenly; 
it might secure a higher average of creature com¬ 
fort ; it might multiply commodities ; it would 
not produce men. Scant room and small stimulus 
would it furnish for the development of high char¬ 
acter. Above the dead levels of mediocrity its 
sons and daughters could not rise. The growth 
of the highest manhood demands, to my thinking, 
more liberty and more responsibility than Social¬ 
ism allows. 

And this is the final and fatal objection. What¬ 
ever else we get or lose, we must not fail to secure 
the enduring good of character. The test of all 
institutions, of all systems, is this : what kind of 
men do they produce ? Socialism would not abide 
the test. 

The competitive regime tends, as we have seen, 
to produce “ a race of powerful incarnate selfish¬ 
ness.’’ Against this tendency every lover of his 
kind is called to do battle with all the manhood that 
is in him. Such an issue is simply the consum¬ 
mation of depravity. 

“Not for this 

Was common clay ta’en from the common earth, 
Moulded by God and tempered by the tears 
Of angels to the perfect shape of man.” 

But Socialism, rushing to the other extreme, 
seeks to inaugurate a social order that would almost 


274 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


surely produce a race of weak, insipid, dependent 
creatures. Not suck as tkese are the sons of God, 
for whose manifestation the whole creation groan- 
eth and travaileth in pain until now. 

Midway between these two opposing errors is 
the safe path of social progress. What is called 
the golden mean is sometimes a pinchbeck evasion, 
but here it is not so. And the glory of the latter 
day will not come until men learn how to unite and 
coordinate Individualism and Socialism, — how to 
join liberty with love and the perfection of each 
with the welfare of all. 


X. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 

In most of the recent treatises on Socialism we 
find a chapter entitled “ Christian Socialism.” Is 
the phrase significant? Is Christianity in any 
sense socialistic, or may Socialism he Christian ? 

We have found some reasons for believing that 
Christianity is not Individualism. During the last 
century the Christian religion has encountered no 
deadlier foe than the philosophy which underlies 
the competitive system. The growth of an un¬ 
social temper, so pathetically deplored by Mr. 
Sidgwick, the separation of classes, the war of 
interests, are the legitimate offspring of a doctrine 
which counsels all men to seek first the gratifica¬ 
tion of self, and trust that all things needful in 
the way of spiritual and social good will be added 
unto them. It is evident that the Ricardian econ¬ 
omy can be adjusted to no philosophy but that of 
egoistic hedonism; and it is scarcely necessary to 
say that this variety of hedonism is the antithesis 
of the Christian ethics. 

The system which exalts competition as the su¬ 
preme regulative force assumes the law of natural 
selection. Darwin found his phrase “ the struggle 


2 76 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


for existence ” in the writings of Malthus; the 
survival of the fittest is the logical basis of the old 
economy. The survival of the fittest means the 
killing off of the unfit. 44 There has been of late 
in some quarters,” says Professor Ingram, “ a 
tendency to apply the doctrine of the 4 survival of 
the fittest’ to human society in such a way as to 
intensify the harsher features of Malthus’s expo¬ 
sition, by encouraging the idea that whatever can¬ 
not sustain itself is fated, and must be allowed to 
disappear .” 1 That is the logic of Individualism. 

44 But what has Christianity to say about this 
law ? ” it may be asked. 44 Does Christianity deny 
that this principle of natural selection is at work; 
that there is a struggle for existence; that it is the 
strongest, or those best fitted to their environ¬ 
ment, that survive ? Is not this a fact of science ? ” 
The answer is that Christianity does recognize 
the working of this law, and then sets itself with 
all its might to counteract the injuries wrought 
by it; to save those who are being worsted in the 
struggle for existence. Its King is the first and 
greatest of those 44 knights of the long arms,” of 
whom they used to talk in the days of chivalry, 
whose glory it is to rescue the helpless and the 
friendless: — 

“ He comes, with succor speedy, 

To those who suffer wrong 1 , 

To help the poor and needy, 

And bid the weak be strong.” 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, xix. p. 373, 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


277 


Christianity recognizes this law of natural selec¬ 
tion as the law of our lower, animal existence, the 
law by which we are allied to the brutes ; and it 
seeks to hold it in check by the operation of the 
higher spiritual law of sympathy and good-will. 
In short, Christianity treats the principle of natu¬ 
ral selection exactly as the higher order of evolu¬ 
tionary philosophers themselves treat it. They do 
not regard it as the final law of a perfected civili¬ 
zation ; they show how it operates among the races 
of animals and plants; they admit that barbarous 
tribes of men are largely under its sway; but 
they insist that man is gradually rising above 
its domain, and that “ the end of the working 
of natural selection upon man ” is not far off. 
“ The universal struggle for existence,” says Mr. 
Fiske, “ having succeeded in bringing forth that 
consummate product of creative energy, the Hu¬ 
man Soul, has done its work and will presently 
cease. In the lower regions of organic life it must 
go on ; but as a determining factor in the highest 
work of evolution it will disappear.” 1 This is the 
evolutionist’s account of natural selection as a 
force in human history, and his prediction respect¬ 
ing its outcome. “ The manifestation of selfish 
and hateful feelings,” says this philosopher again, 
“ will be more and more sternly repressed by pub¬ 
lic opinion, and such feelings will become weak¬ 
ened by disuse, while the sympathetic feelings will 
increase in strength as the sphere for their exercise 
1 The Destiny of Man, p. 96. 


278 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


is enlarged. And thus, at length, we see what hu¬ 
man progress means. It means throwing off the 
brute inheritance, — gradually throwing it off 
through ages of struggle that are by and by to 
make struggle needless. Man is slowly passing 
from a primitive social state, in which he was little 
better than a brute, toward an ultimate social 
state in which his character shall have become so 
transformed that nothing of the brute can be de¬ 
tected in it.” 1 And this, as Mr. Fiske heartily 
declares, is the precise message of pure Christian¬ 
ity. 

But it may be said that the old economy did not 
justify the egoistic tempers and practices; it only 
recognized them as facts, and made its maxims 
and theories correspond to them. This is not 
quite true. It either assumed, with Smith and 
Malthus, that unrestrained egoism would result in 
universal welfare, or it insisted, with later econo¬ 
mists, that the law of supply and demand was an 
44 inexorable ” natural law whose severities could 
not be mitigated by the will of man. Both as¬ 
sumptions are false, and both are mischievous, in 
that they tend to check the development of those 
sympathetic feelings which are the natural fruit of 
Christianity, and on which the welfare of mankind 
so largely depends. 

It is only within recent years that the sharp 
contrast between the tendencies of the individual¬ 
istic philosophy and the spirit of Christianity has 
1 The Destiny of Man, p. 102. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


279 


been manifest. The regimen which develops such 
unsocial tempers is certainly losing favor with stu¬ 
dents of social science; and Christian thinkers, 
especially, are turning with a sharp recoil from 
the doctrines which bring forth such baleful fruit. 

Turning away from Individualism, their faces 
are set in the direction of its opposite, which is 
Socialism. And they immediately find that the 
affiliations of Christianity with Socialism are much 
closer than with the contrasted doctrine. Some 
foundation might be found for the claim that 
Christianity is socialistic in its tendencies. In 
fact, through a considerable portion of its history 
Christianity has often been explicitly socialistic, 
or even communistic in its teachings. The early 
Christian Fathers, by many of their utterances, 
sanctioned the most radical agrarianism. “The 
rich man is a thief,” cries St. Basil. “ The rich 
are robbers,” echoes Chrysostom; “ a kind of 
equality must be effected by making gifts out of 
their abundance. Better all things were in com¬ 
mon.” “ Nature created community; private prop¬ 
erty is the offspring of usurpation,” said Ambrose. 
“ In strict justice, everything should belong to all. 
Iniquity alone has created private property,” 1 de¬ 
clares Clement. It is true that this is not their 
uniform teaching, and many other passages defend 
private property ; nevertheless, the stronger im¬ 
pression made upon their hearers by the impas¬ 
sioned appeals of these early preachers was that 
1 Quoted by Laveleye, Socialism of To-day , p. xix. 


280 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


the Christian law simply tolerated private prop¬ 
erty, and preferred community of goods. The 
example of the first church at Jerusalem was also 
supposed to countenance this view, and by many 
of the words of Christ and his apostles it was 
believed to be approved. Surely there can be no 
doubt that the gracious fraternity of spirit, the 
unity of feeling, the identity of interest which the 
New Testament always enjoins and praises are 
nearer to the ideal of the Socialists than to that 
of the Ricardians. And if I were shut up to the 
two alternatives of Individualism, with its fierce 
principle of the survival of the fittest, and Social¬ 
ism, with its leveling tendencies, I should take my 
stand with the Socialists. 

There is, then, some justification for this phrase, 
Christian Socialism. I think Laveleye is rather 
enthusiastic when he cries, “ Every Christian who 
understands and earnestly accepts the teachings 
of his Master is at heart a Socialist, and every 
Socialist, whatever may be his hatred against all 
religion, bears within himself an unconscious Chris¬ 
tianity.” I would rather say that every intelli¬ 
gent and consistent Christian approves of the end 
at which the Socialists are aiming; and that, in 
many of their ideas and methods, Socialists and 
Christians are in closest sympathy. 

We go part way with Marx and Rodbertus; 
then we part company with them. How far can 
we wisely go with them ? How many of their pro¬ 
jects may we safely adopt ? 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


281 


Socialism, as we have seen, is simply a proposi¬ 
tion to extend the functions of the state so that it 
shall include and control nearly all the interests of 
life. Now, I take it, we are agreed that, as Chris¬ 
tians, we have a right to make use of the power of 
the state, both in protecting life and property, and 
in promoting, to some extent, the general welfare. 
Not only have we no scruples against availing our¬ 
selves of these political agencies for securing the 
general well-being, we believe that this is one of 
our most imperative and most religious duties. 
Count Tolstoi’s philanthropic nihilism does not, 
probably, commend itself to our common-sense. 
We think it desirable that all men should be Chris¬ 
tians ; and we believe that if all men were Chris¬ 
tians, the government of this country would be in 
the hands of Christians, and we cannot imagine that 
it could be in better hands. The more there is of 
genuine Christian influence and Christian princi¬ 
ple in the administration of government, the better 
the government will be. That is our claim. Our 
problem is to christianize all our governments as 
speedily and as thoroughly as we may. Following 
this purpose, how far ought we, as Christian citi¬ 
zens, to go in seeking to promote the public wel¬ 
fare through political action? Especially ought 
we to favor the attempt on the part of the state to 
improve the condition of its poorest and least for¬ 
tunate classes ? This is the real motive of Social¬ 
ism. The promotion of the common good is al¬ 
ways the end proposed ; but those whom it chiefly 


282 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


seeks to benefit are those who are neediest. This 
is the very spirit and purpose of Christianity; 
why, then, should not we who are Christians, as 
fast as we get into our hands the power of the 
state, use that power for the benefit of the toiling 
and suffering classes ? Why should not “ All-of- 
us,” acting through those organized methods 
which the state furnishes, extend help and encour¬ 
agement to the weakest and humblest of us ? All 
will admit that there is much that the state can do 
to improve the condition of its neediest classes, 
without any straining of its functions. 

1. Protection the state does surely owe to all 
its citizens, rich and poor, capitalist and laborer; 
concerning this there is no controversy. We may 
all unite in insisting that the state shall make jus¬ 
tice swift and sure. “ To establish justice for all 
men, from the least to the greatest,” is the first of 
its duties. It is doubtful whether there is in all 
parts of the country an equal law for rich and 
poor. The friendless poor man gets short shrift 
and summary vengeance ; the rich rascal can se¬ 
cure delays and perversions of equity, and often 
goes scot free. The man who steals a ham from 
a freight car goes to jail; the man who steals the 
railroad goes to the United States Senate. Now, 
while it may be denied by some that the law ought 
to do anything to help or favor poor men, it must 
be allowed by all that the law ought to give the 
poor man an equal chance with the rich, and this 
he has not, so long as there is any color of truth in 
complaints like these. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


283 


2. We can also demand that the state shall 
cease to create and foster monopolies. If it cannot 
prevent the growth of monopolies, it can certainly 
refrain from planting and watering them. The 
state has done a great deal of this vicious hus¬ 
bandry. Its representatives have granted, for no 
consideration, the most valuable franchises to great 
companies and corporations, and the money of 
these great companies and corporations has shaped 
legislation and purchased judicial decisions by 
which their power has been confirmed, and by 
which the tribute they levy upon the industry of 
the country has been legalized and perpetuated. 
We have been furnishing these people rope where¬ 
with to strangle us. We have suffered our na¬ 
tional domain, by hundreds of millions of acres, to 
fall into the hands of monopolists. All this leg¬ 
islation, establishing and fostering monoplies, is 
especially burdensome to the poorer classes. We 
must all pay tribute to these lords of our own 
creation, but it is harder for the poor than for 
the rich. The street railways in most of our cities 
ought to bring large revenues to the municipality, 
by which the burdens of taxation should be greatly 
lightened. Instead of this, every workingman 
with his dinner pail pays toll to a rich corporation. 
The monopoly of the public land is a special hard¬ 
ship. This has always been the poor man’s ref¬ 
uge. The main reason why labor has steadily 
commanded higher prices in this country than else¬ 
where has been the abundance of cheap and 


284 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


accessible land to which the wage-worker could at 
any time betake himself if wages were low. Now 
that this door is shut, the pressure upon the work¬ 
ing class is sure to increase. It is time for the 
Christian citizen to take hold with resolute hands 
of these abuses of government by which the poor 
are despoiled and burdened and fettered for the 
benefit of the rich. 

So much as this we can all agree upon. That 
the state shall furnish to its humblest citizen per¬ 
fect protection; that it shall establish equal and 
even-handed justice; that it shall refrain from 
licensing and fortifying monopolies ; that it shall 
do what it can to give all its citizens an equal 
chance; all this the devotee of laissez faire asserts 
as strenuously as the scientific Socialist. But 
this, says the philosopher of laissez faire , is the 
place to stop. Protection is the legitimate func¬ 
tion of the state; the promotion of welfare is not. 
It is not wise to enlarge the field of state action. 
Much of the work that the state now does is poorly 
done; it would be folly to put any more work into 
its hands. The Socialists’ demand for extension 
of the functions of government is the extreme of 
folly. 

This argument is familiar; I have used it myself, 
more than once; but it is not so conclusive to my 
mind now as once it was. It is by no means clear 
that our governments would not all be improved by 
putting heavier burdens on them. Satan finds some 
mischief still for the idle hands of public officials. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


285 


In my own city the power of the mayor is almost 
all taken away and distributed amongst various 
boards; the office, as an executive, is as near a 
nullity as the Legislature could make it; and the 
consequence is that no man of high character wants 
to take it, and it is a source of scandal and public 
shame. The Legislatures of many of our States 
have tried this experiment of stripping the people 
of the cities of political power; the attempt has 
been made to take as many as possible of the func¬ 
tions of government away from the people and con¬ 
fer them upon outside commissions; and the result 
has been, in every case, disastrous. The weaker 
the municipal government is, the wickeder it is : is 
not this a universal rule ? If much responsibility is 
concentrated upon one person, the people are much 
more likely to see to it that that person is fit to 
bear it. The heavier the duties resting upon the 
officials, the greater the care exercised by the 
voters. And I am not at all sure that a consider¬ 
able extension of the functions of government 
would not arouse our people, as nothing else has 
done, to attend to their political duties. At any 
rate I am quite ready to see the experiment tried. 
If we have not yet attained to that lofty morality 
by which we should be fitted for the tremendous 
tasks imposed upon us by Socialism, we are ready, 
I think, to assume larger responsibilities, and to 
undertake greater services. It may be that some 
inspiration would come to the people, if by any 
means their notion of the scope and dignity of 


286 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


their political functions should be somewhat en¬ 
larged. The theory of laissez faire is that the 
state is to exercise only police functions. Now 
the duties of a policeman are not of a particularly 
inspiring nature. It is doubtful whether they tend 
to enlarge his intellect or improve his manhood. I 
seem to remember the fragment of a classic ode, in 
which is some suggestion that a policeman’s life is 
extremely unideal. If, now, the people, in the 
exercise of their political duties, are in the habit 
of regarding themselves simply as policemen, it is 
doubtful whether they will get much mental or 
moral stimulus out of politics. The infusion of 
other motives might lift our political life to a dis¬ 
tinctly higher plane. It is easy to sneer at senti¬ 
ment in politics; you know of some high - class 
journalists who are masters of this art; and, on 
laissez faire principles, this sneering is, of course, 
the proper thing ; but there is still room for doubt 
whether desiccated politics are altogether nutri¬ 
tious to the national life. And if the American 
people should leave these rudiments of political 
science, and go on toward a higher conception of 
their political life, regarding, with Bluntschli, “ the 
proper and direct end of the state as the develop¬ 
ment of the national capacities, the perfecting of 
the national life, and finally its completion,” 1 I 
should begin to look for the dawn of the informing 
light upon our political chaos. 

In the most curt and comprehensive fashion, let 
1 The Theory of the State , p. 300. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


287 


me proceed to name a number of the points at 
which, according to my conception of the Christian 
ethics, the functions of the state might well be 
extended beyond the boundaries laid down by the 
advocates of laissez faire. Concerning some of 
these governmental interferences, there will be no 
question; they are already sanctioned by the tra¬ 
ditions and the laws of our people. Yet they are 
all departures from the strict standards of Indi¬ 
vidualism. 

1. The Christian state may furnish a certain 
amount of public instruction, and require its 
citizens to avail themselves of it. This is not, of 
course, an open question in this country, albeit the 
measure is utterly socialistic. So Mr. Herbert 
Spencer and his friends most strenuously declare. 
The provision of elementary instruction for the 
common people at the expense of the state is 
denounced by them as a most dangerous encroach¬ 
ment upon liberty. In the eyes of these gentlemen 
the common school is one of the most startling 
signs of the loss of our birthright. When a free 
people submits to be taxed for the purpose of pro¬ 
viding educational opportunities for all its children, 
it is taking a long stride, so Mr. Spencer and his 
friends cry out, in the downward way from free¬ 
dom to bondage. 

I do not sympathize with their apprehensions, 
but I quite agree with them that the measure is 
essentially socialistic. It is true, that awkward 
attempts have been made to justify our public 


288 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


schools on the ground that they prevent crime; 
but, with President Walker, “ I do not believe that 
this was the real consideration and motive which, 
in any instance, ever actually led to the establish¬ 
ment of the system of instruction under public 
authority, or which, in any land, supports instruc¬ 
tion now. ... In all its stages this movement 
has been purely socialistic in character, springing 
out of a conviction that the state would be 
stronger, and the individual members of the state 
would be richer and happier and better if power 
and discretion were taken away from the family 
and lodged with the government.” 1 The only 
thing to be desired is that this work of public 
instruction should be distinctly and consciously 
placed upon this higher basis. It is not well done 
when it is done as a mere extension of the police 
function of the government. It needs a higher 
motive. 

2. The sanitary supervision by which pure air 
and water are secured for all the people is another 
of the functions of the Christian state. Professor 
Walker thinks that this is fairly included within 
the police functions; that it is simply a measure of 
necessary protection ; Mr. Spencer would scarcely 
agree with him; nevertheless, whether it be old or 
new theory, it is good sense and good Christian 
morality. 

8. The Christian state can discourage, if it 
cannot extirpate, the parasites which are fattening 
1 Scribner's Magazine , i. 110. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


289 


upon our industries. (1.) The criminals are para¬ 
sites of labor; all theories of the state agree that 
they must be repressed. But there are other para¬ 
sites toward whom a wholesome severity is required. 
(2.) The pauper class is rapidly growing, and it is 
fostered, in large measure, by careless administra¬ 
tion of poor relief. The question whether the 
state ought to undertake the support of the help¬ 
less poor is an open question; but there is no 
question concerning the attitude of the state to¬ 
ward that large class of persons who would rather 
beg than dig. For all this class it must learn to 
provide sharp restraint and rigorous discipline. 
To live without work at the expense of the com¬ 
munity must be made hazardous and unprofitable 
business. (3.) The gamblers, including the crowds 
of so-called speculators in the great cities who get 
their living by betting on margins, are also para¬ 
sites ; economically they belong to the same class 
as the beggars and the thieves; they live without 
rendering to society any service whatever. These 
classes absorb a large share of the wealth produced. 
Whatever they consume is so much subtracted 
from the aggregate product of industry, and it 
leaves just so much less to be distributed among 
the productive classes. The state must find some 
way of suppressing this economical parasitism. 

4. The Christian state will find itself enlisted 
for the suppression of the saloon. Under the 
theory which limits the power of the state to the 
suppression of crime and the preservation of the 


290 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


liberty of the citizen, this might be logically ad¬ 
missible ; under the theory which commits the 
state to the promotion of the general welfare it 
is easily justified. Whatever manifestly tends to 
the detriment of society at large may and must 
be suppressed. The liquor interest has become a 
gigantic, consolidated, unsocial force, directly and 
malignantly assailing the community, undermining 
its thrift, corrupting its political life, destroying 
its peace; and against it, not merely the teacher 
with his science, and the preacher with his Bible, 
and the philanthropist with his sympathy for the 
fallen, but “ All-of-us,” with all the power we pos¬ 
sess, must arise and do battle. Of course, it is im¬ 
portant that we manage this campaign with that 
prudence which is always the better part of valor, 
and that we carefully consider all the conditions in 
choosing our weapons and our methods of attack; 
but there need be no uncertainty as to the ultimate 
purpose, which is the destruction of the rum power, 
— the power that now is threatening the destruc¬ 
tion of the state. 

In these instances which I have last named, — 
the destruction of the parasites of industry and the 
overthrow of the liquor power, — it is the general 
welfare that is sought, rather than the welfare of 
any particular class; yet the evils against which 
they seek to provide bear most heavily upon the 
poorest people; and it may, therefore, be claimed 
that through such measures the strength of the 
state is interposed to shelter or succor its weakest 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 291 

citizens. This is a socialistic motive. This is 
Christian Socialism. 

5. A more express interference of this nature 
is the prohibition of Sunday labor. In this action 
the state puts forth its power for the benefit of a 
particular class, the laboring class. The suppres¬ 
sion of Sunday labor is a plank in the platforms 
of many of the socialistic and labor organizations 
of Europe. It is a purely socialistic measure. 
And I, for one, am Socialist enough to be heartily 
in favor of it. The one priceless good of which 
the workingman ought never to be robbed is the 
weekly rest day. It cannot be preserved for him 
without the interposition of the state. As Dr. 
Leonard Woolsey Bacon has so strongly shown, 
the liberty of rest for each requires the law of rest 
for all. It is probable that some revision of the 
Sunday laws of most of our States is necessary to 
fit them to the new conditions of civilization; but 
the line should be sharply drawn, and every indus¬ 
try that can be interrupted by the Sabbath should 
be brought to a pause every Saturday night. 

6. I have no doubt that the state will also be 
compelled to limit the hours of labor in some call¬ 
ings, if not in all. With respect to the wisdom of 
such restriction upon the labor of women and chil¬ 
dren there can be no question. The fact that the 
machinery now in use in the various manufactur¬ 
ing industries will produce vastly more than the 
people can possibly consume, if it is kept in opera¬ 
tion through all the hours of the present working 


292 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


day, indicates the wisdom of reducing the number 
of those hours. The simplest method for the ac¬ 
complishment of this purpose may be the direct 
interference of the state. When “ All-of-us ” see 
that it is best for “ All-of-us,” “ All-of-us” can say 
so and have it so. It is very often said that all 
these matters will regulate themselves if they are 
let alone. But they do not regulate themselves; 
the tendency to the degradation of the weak is ir¬ 
resistible. “ The free play of individual interests,” 
says Dr. Henry Carter Adams, “ tends to force the 
moral sentiment pervading any trade down to the 
level of that which characterizes the worst man 
who can maintain himself in it. So far as morals 
are concerned, it is the character of the worst men 
and not of the best men that gives color to busi¬ 
ness society. . . . Suppose that of ten manufac¬ 
turers nine have a keen appreciation of the evils 
that flow from protracted labor on the part of 
women and children, and, were it in their power, 
would gladly produce cottons without destroying 
family life, and without setting in motion those 
forces which must ultimately result in race deteri¬ 
oration. But the tenth man has no such apprehen¬ 
sions. The claims of family life, the rights of 
childhood, and the maintenance of social well-be¬ 
ing are but words to him. He measures success 
wholly by the rate of profit, and controls his busi¬ 
ness solely with a view to grand sales. If, now, 
the state stand as an unconcerned spectator, whose 
only duty is to put down a riot when the strike 


CHBIST1AN SOCIALISM. 


293 


occurs (a duty which government in this country is 
giving up to private management), the nine men 
will be forced to conform to the methods adopted 
by the one. Their goods come into competition 
with his goods, and we who purchase do not in¬ 
quire under what conditions they are manufactured. 
In this manner it is that men of the lowest charac¬ 
ter have it in their power to give the moral tone 
to the entire business community.” 1 

This is not mere theory; this process has been 
repeated over and over for a hundred years; and 
we have seen the weak oppressed and degraded by 
it, and workmen and work-women by the thousand 
sinking into starvation under the operation of this 
law. This is what liberty means when the weak 
are left to contend with the strong. And no rem¬ 
edy for this state of things arises under purely 
economic causes. On the contrary, it waxes worse 
and worse continually. The only remedies are the 
combination of laborers to resist such oppression 
and the intervention of the state. Both remedies 
are necessary. The state has interfered, with ex¬ 
cellent results, to protect women and children, to 
prescribe the length of the working day, and, in 
many ways, to check the rapacity of the worst em¬ 
ployers. Such legislation does not abolish com¬ 
petition, but it fixes certain limits within which 
competition shall take place. It does not cancel 
liberty; but when it finds men using their liberty 
for the destruction or the enslavement of their fel- 
1 Publications of the Am. Economic Association, i. 505. 


294 


TOOLS AND THE MAN . 


low-men, it lays its restraining hand upon them. 
The state comes in, with its intelligence and its 
conscience, to protect its weaker members from 
the greed that would pauperize or degrade them. 
The liberty of the few rapacious employers, who 
are forcing all the rest to adopt their inhuman 
methods, is somewhat restricted; the liberty of the 
employers of good-will, and of the whole class of 
employees, is greatly enlarged and confirmed. I 
cannot regard this as a tyrannical proceeding; and 
it seems to me that those who so characterize it 
are juggling with words and shutting their eyes to 
facts. 

7. The Christian state must also, for the same 
reason, enforce the sanitary inspection of factories, 
workshops, and mines, to make sure that the health 
and the safety of laborers are secured. And it would 
be well if the definition of “ factory ” could be so 
extended as to include those small garret shops in 
the cities in which so many lives are destroyed. 
This is a service which the intelligence of the na¬ 
tion owes to its toiling classes. Legislation of this 
sort has been in force for several years in Great 
Britain and in this country. It is pure Socialism, 
Christian Socialism, but it is none the less wise 
and beneficent. 

8. The Christian state has a great service to 
perform in healing strife, in making and publish¬ 
ing peace. It ought to stand forth as the peace¬ 
maker in the quarrel between the employers and 
employed. When the employer is an individual 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


295 


or a private company, perhaps the best thing that 
the state can do is to tender its good offices to 
assist the parties in coming to an understanding. 
To this end it may wisely furnish models and sug¬ 
gestions in certain rules of permissive legislation 
for the arbitration of labor disputes. It may ap¬ 
point in every county, or perhaps in every large 
judicial district, a tribunal before which such dis¬ 
putes may be brought. To point out by such per¬ 
missive legislation the right method of submitting 
such disputes to arbitration, and thus to open the 
path of peace and invite the contending parties to 
walk in it, may be a useful service. Such legisla¬ 
tion as this has been provided, with good results, 
in some of our States, 

In the case of all quasi-public corporations, such 
as railroad and telegraph companies, there ought, 
I think, to be a stringent rule requiring all labor 
disputes to be settled by arbitration. Such cor¬ 
porations stand upon a different footing from pri¬ 
vate companies or individual employers; they have 
derived from the state their franchise; they have 
received from the state certain large powers and 
prerogatives ; they may properly be controlled by 
the state in that part of their administration which 
directly affects the public interest. There ought, 
therefore, to be in every State a judicial tribunal 
armed with full powers for the settlement of diffi¬ 
culties between these corporations and their em¬ 
ployees. To this end, the associations of employees 
should be incorporated by the state, and the cor- 


296 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


poration thus formed could be treated as a respon¬ 
sible person, and punished for any failure to obey 
the decision of the arbitrator, by mulcting its 
treasury or canceling its charter. The failure or 
refusal of either party to submit to arbitration 
should be made a punishable offense ; and no rail¬ 
way company should be entitled to military pro¬ 
tection until it had shown its willingness to settle 
its difficulties with its men by the methods of 
peace. Pending this settlement, the men should 
be required to continue their work on the former 
terms, and it should be made a misdemeanor for 
them to interrupt or obstruct in any way the work 
of the company. The duty of the Christian state 
should be to put an end to these miserable feuds, 
and to compel those at least of its citizens who are 
engaged in these public services to compose their 
quarrels without resorting to force. 

I am also enough of a Socialist to believe that 
every Christian state ought to seek to enter into 
the most solemn treaty stipulations with every 
other nation, providing that all international dis¬ 
putes shall be settled in the same way by reference 
to neutral and friendly powers. I do not believe 
that it is either necessary or wise for this country 
to be spending millions on millions of money in 
building war-ships. There is a more excellent way. 
The United States is in a position to preach and 
enforce this gospel of peace among the nations ; a 
resolute and persistent effort to avert and banish 
the possibilities of war by establishing and main- 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 297 

taining the tribunals and the methods of arbitra¬ 
tion is the best service that this 1 Republic can 
render to the commonwealth of nations. 

9. Certain great enterprises for the promotion 
of the public welfare the state may wisely under¬ 
take. Before those who insist that state adminis¬ 
tration is always clumsy and costly stands the 
Post Office as a constant confutation. A more 
efficient or more benign and humane agency for 
the service of public needs it would be difficult to 
conceive. It is almost as cheap as light and air 
and gospel grace. If this business had been com¬ 
mitted to private enterprise, we should very likely 
be paying five or ten cents, instead of two, for the 
conveyance of our letters. 

It is difficult to understand why the telegraph 
service, which is far simpler and more manageable, 
should not also be controlled by the government. 
With even our present civil service, which is far 
from perfect, I doubt not the expense of tele¬ 
graphic communication could speedily be reduced 
one half. The people are paying to the owners of 
the principal telegraph monopoly a good rate of 
interest on four or five times the actual cost of the 
lines it is operating. I see no decent reason why 
“ All-of-us ” should allow Some-of-us to bleed The- 
rest-of-us after this fashion. That the state should 
provide the people with facilities of communication 
by telegraph, as well as by post, I have no doubt. 

Whether the railroads will speedily come under 
state control or state ownership is a more diffi- 


298 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


cult question. If, as has been said, the question 
simply is whether the government shall own the 
railroads or the railroads the government, the 
choice will not be difficult. As to the principle 
involved, the state has the same right to build and 
maintain a railroad that it has to build and main¬ 
tain a highway. If the public welfare would be 
greatly promoted by committing this great interest 
to the control of the state, then it ought to be 
done. The objection to it is the fear that the 
state would fail in the administration, and be de¬ 
bauched by it. The common theory is that pri¬ 
vate enterprise manages all these great matters 
much more economically and efficiently than the 
government could manage them. This is not 
clear; the reckless and wasteful competitions of 
the railway builders are notorious. We are told 
that the present railway facilities of the United 
States could be replaced for a thousand million 
dollars less than they have cost. And the extor¬ 
tion, the tyranny, the corruptions practiced by 
these great corporations in their discriminations 
against persons and places, in their cold-blooded 
slaughter of the enterprises which they cannot 
control, and in their manipulation of courts and 
legislatures, furnish one of the most harrowing 
chapters of recent history. Just what can be done 
about it is not so clear. It is a great and diffi¬ 
cult problem. But it is not solving itself ; laissez 
faire shows no signs of solving it. The evils con¬ 
nected with railways in this country manifest all 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


299 


the symptoms of a social disease, whose constant 
tendency it is to become more aggravated and un¬ 
manageable. It is a desperate case; it may require 
surgery; but that is not a good reason for letting 
it alone. A Christian state that sought the high¬ 
est welfare of its people would be constrained to 
take hold of it. The one strong reason for hesi¬ 
tation is the fear that the state is not Christian 
enough; that the public virtue is not sufficiently 
genuine and stalwart to cope with such a problem. 
If the people think themselves too weak to chal¬ 
lenge the evils that threaten their national life, 
doubtless they are too weak. But who will save 
them ? They must find for themselves some way 
of deliverance. To my own mind, it has become 
increasingly clear that all industries which are vir¬ 
tual monopolies must be controlled by the state. 
Kailroads, telegraphs, street railways, gas compa¬ 
nies, electric lighting companies are all, in effect, 
monopolies. In the business which they do there 
can be no effective competition. The railroads 
compete at certain points, but the traffic at non¬ 
competitive points is therefore taxed to pay for 
the low rates at the competitive points. By the 
discrimination which they are able to make in 
behalf of persons and places, the railways may be 
and often are gigantic instruments of oppression ; 
their policy is to favor the strong at the expense 
of the weak. And it is evident that any industry 
in which there is and can be no effective compe¬ 
tition should be under the control of the state. 


300 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


Such an industry has abandoned the field and the 
method of commerce. It is not under the law of 
supply and demand; it does not offer its commod¬ 
ities or its services in an open market; it has closed 
the market; it compels you to take what it offers 
and pay its price. This is not, in any proper sense, 
trade ; this is essentially taxation. Now I do not 
think that a free people can safely commit the 
power of taxation to irresponsible associations of 
their own citizens. And, therefore, I think that 
all virtual monopolies must eventually belong to 
the state. It is not necessary to confiscate them, 
they can be equitably acquired without inflicting 
real injury on their present owners. Nor is it 
necessary that the state should undertake the man¬ 
agement of these great industries; it may simply 
fix the rates and the rules of service, and then 
lease them for limited terms to the highest bid¬ 
der, — regulating and superintending their work, 
as that of the national banks is now regulated and 
superintended, but leaving to private enterprise 
their administration. All this, as it seems to me, 
the Christian state is bound to do, as part of its 
duty to the weak in protecting them against the 
encroachments of the strong. 

10. One or two measures of public policy may, 
erelong, commend themselves to the judgment of 
“ All-of-us.” Professor Hadley has shown, in a 
recent paper, 1 that the evils connected with our 
railway system are closely paralleled by those aris- 

1 Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. i. No. 1. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


301 


ing from our great industrial corporations of all 
kinds; and that the treatment found necessary 
in the one case may possibly be called for in the 
other. And President Walker, in the article 
quoted above, sets forth in a few luminous words 
the portentous nature of the problem presented by 
the corporation, that artificial person created by 
the state, “ whose powers do not decay with years; 
whose hand never shakes with palsy, never grows 
senseless and still in death; whose estate is never 
to be distributed; whose plans can be pursued 
through successive generations of mortal men.” 
The creation of this gigantic immoral person wholly 
neutralizes the operation of the ordinary economic 
forces ; with a “ magnified, non-natural man ” of 
this description no ordinary person can compete on 
any terms of equality. Here enters a power that 
requires for its control the supreme power of the 
state. None other dares confront it. How to en¬ 
chain and subdue this race of titans that we have 
let loose in the land is a great question which the 
Christian state is called to solve. 

The nationalization of the land does not, prob¬ 
ably, commend itself to the good sense of the 
American people, but they are pretty sure to find 
out, in the discussion now in progress, that the su¬ 
preme title to the land is vested, by the Creator, in 
the people ; and while they clearly see that private 
ownership most surely promotes the public welfare, 
they are also likely to insist upon a sharp limitation 
of the amount which any individual is allowed to 
control. 


302 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


And, finally, inasmuch as the creation and con¬ 
tinuance of enormous fortunes is clearly against 
public policy, the Christian state may find it wise 
to lay a heavy tax upon all legacies exceeding a 
certain sum. The rights of every man over his 
possessions — no matter how acquired — terminate 
with his life; the privilege of bequest is granted 
by society because it is believed that thrift is thus 
encouraged, and the public welfare promoted; 
when it becomes evident that the perpetuation of 
great properties is injurious to the people, ways 
must be found of discouraging such accumulations. 

Such are some of the changes in their methods 
of administration which a Christian people, intent 
on promoting the general welfare, may seek to real¬ 
ize. It is needful, first, to see what ought to be 
done in this direction, and how to do it. States¬ 
manship is an art — the finest of the arts ; Chris¬ 
tian statesmanship ought to be the highest type of 
this finest art. The Christian people of this coun¬ 
try are called to rule; a great curse will rest on 
them and on the land if they come short of their 
high calling. If they are to rule, they must know 
how to rule. Not only the office-holders, but the 
people also must know how to rule. There is a 
right way to rule a state as there is a right way to 
sail a ship or to plant a field, and the Christian 
people must learn that way, and practice it. 

It is sometimes supposed, or seems to be, that if 
the people are only spiritually minded, the affairs 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


303 


of the state will order themselves aright by a spon¬ 
taneous movement. It is a vast mistake. Here is 
a farmer planting his corn in the middle of August, 
because he has been taught and believes that that 
is the proper time for planting. Of course he never 
gets a crop. Shall we say that if the man were 
soundly converted his methods of husbandry would 
be wiser ? It is not his heart that is wrong, but 
his head. It is not the gospel that he needs; he 
needs a few primary lessons in agriculture. Here 
is a physician who has been taught and believes that 
the right remedy for consumption is blood-letting. 
His patients all die, but he keeps right on with his 
bleeding, ascribing their death to a mysterious 
Providence. It is not the lack of religion that 
ails him; he has too much religion and too little 
science. Even so the great art of statecraft, like 
the lesser arts of husbandry and healing, must be 
studied by the men who practice them,— studied 
patiently and profoundly, — else they will continu¬ 
ally be making ruinous blunders, and no sanctifica¬ 
tion of the heart will prevent or correct these fatal¬ 
ities. They must not only mean well; they must 
know how. It is not enough that their hearts are 
right; their heads must be clear and their methods 
wise. And when Christian men set themselves to 
the study of these great problems, they need to 
understand at the outset that their Great Teacher 
and Guide is not Machiavelli the Italian, or Ben- 
tham the Englishman, but Jesus Christ the Naza- 
rene. The fact that he has in this world 


304 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


“ A kingdom still increasing, 

A kingdom without end,” 

is the one fact that they must not miss. To know 
well the laws of that kingdom, as fully as we can 
to make the laws of our States conform to them, — 
this is our problem. To apply the Christian law 
to all our social and political questions, and to 
walk steadfastly in the light of that great law in 
all that we do for the state and for society, — this 
is our rule of life. 

This is what we have been trying to do in the 
studies that are now closing. We have diligently 
sought to discover the bearing of this law upon 
these great social problems ; and we have found 
its precepts writ large over every one of them. I 
hope that we may be able to see that Christ has a 
law for the government of men in the social rela¬ 
tions, and that it is our business to enforce that 
law; not merely to tell men that they ought to 
be Christians, but to show them the principle on 
which they must act when they become Christians. 

Yet the fact remains that Christianity is some¬ 
thing more than a law; it is a spirit also, and a 
life. The trouble of the world arises in part from 
the fact that men have not fully comprehended 
Christ’s law in its application to social relations, 
but even more from the fact that they have failed 
to receive his spirit and to share his life. We 
need better methods ; still more do we need better 
men. Bad philosophy has slain its thousands, but 
bad temper its tens of thousands. There is need 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


305 


of reform in economical theories, and industrial 
systems, and in political machinery, but deeper is 
the need of devoted and sanctified souls. It will 
be of little avail to reorganize our industries if we 
cannot secure a more unselfish spirit in employers 
and employees; arbitration will fail unless the love 
of justice can prevail over the greed of gain; in¬ 
dustrial partnership will come to naught where the 
egoism of the old regime remains unsubdued; co¬ 
operation will never thrive until the cooperative 
spirit and habit have found root in the lives of 
men. So, also, all these efforts of the state, of 
which we have been speaking, to redress social 
injuries, and promote the social welfare, will be 
futile unless a deeper sense of the sacredness of 
their political obligations and a stronger love for 
social justice can, somehow, be imparted to the 
citizens. Thus we see how all the evils of which 
we speak have their roots in moral causes, and 
how all the radical remedies must come from an 
improvement in the moral standards and the moral 
conditions of men. 

Yet here is a troublesome antinomy that we 
must not fail to see. From “ the reign of peace, 
the happy republic,” cries Professor Graham, 
“ what chiefly keeps us back ? Want of love and 
charity,” he answers; “ too much regard for self, 
too little regard for others, the latter partly a 
consequence of our present condition of life and 
scheme of society. But society will change, is 
changing, and if social arrangements, which at 


306 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


present repress and smother the native love in our 
hearts for our fellows, were corrected, this innate 
love would get its chance and would shine forth.” 1 
If men were better, the social arrangements would 
soon improve; but while some social arrangements 
remain as they are, it is hard for men to become 
better. The best teaching, the holiest example, 
the most inspiring influence would avail but little 
for the reformation of a family packed into one 
of those horrible tenement houses of New York; 
you must get them out of those associations. Men 
need mending, and their circumstances too. The 
Individualist cares only for men and neglects the 
environment; he is a fool; for the environment, in 
a thousand ways, reacts upon the man and checks 
or distorts his development. The Socialist cares 
only for the environment, and neglects the man; 
he is a fool; for the springs of power are in the 
human personality. You cannot make men tem¬ 
perate by law; and if your teaching gives the im¬ 
pression that the evil of intemperance is wholly or 
mainly due to the presence of temptation, it will 
be very mischievous teaching. It is the men that 
most need reforming. Nevertheless, it is far easier 
to reform men when the temptations are lessened — 
remove them utterly we never can; and therefore 
we must labor steadily at both ends of the line — 
to save men and to banish temptation. A better 
society to live in, and better men to live in it, — 
this is what we are working for. And so we come 
1 The Social Problem , p. 468. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 


307 


back to the point from which we started, and listen 
once more to the voice of our great Leader and 
Captain, as he cries, “ Repent, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand! ” To help in the utterance of 
that message, in the fulfilling of that promise, is the 
high calling of every Christian man. It is the 
faith, also, of every Christian man that this is no 
quixotic undertaking, but that the increasing pur¬ 
pose which he discerns is leading to the goal of 
universal peace. He believes that this great realm 
of natural powers can be christianized; that its 
worst abuses can be corrected; that its mighty 
forces can be sanctified; that industry and trade 
can be so transformed by humane motives that 
they shall be serviceable to all the higher interests 
of men. There are evidences that this work is 
going on silently but effectually ; that some of our 
captains of industry are beginning to understand 
something of their true vocation, and to see that it 
is not alone their individual advantage that they 
ought to seek, but the welfare and happiness of all 
whose labor they employ. Faint signs are even 
now visible in our sky of the dawning of a day 
when business shall be to many men the high call¬ 
ing of God and the medium through which unself¬ 
ish spirits shall pour out their energies in ministries 
of help and friendship ; when political office shall 
be regarded as a solemn trust held for the welfare 
of the whole people ; when the creatures who live 
by corrupting and despoiling their fellows shall 
seem to men’s thought almost as fabulous as the 


308 


TOOLS AND THE MAN. 


dragons and vampires of mythologic lore. I write 
these last words while the Christmas bells are ring¬ 
ing and the happy voices of little children, with 
their hearts full of the gladness of good-will, are 
borne to my ear upon the frosty air. Surely it is 
a happier world than that to which the heavens 
bowed that night in Bethlehem ! And is there not 
good reason for hoping that 

“ Love which is sunlight of peace, 

Age by age [shall] increase, 

Till anger and hate are dead, 

And sorrow and death shall cease ” ? 

It is not all a dream ; the happy time draws nearer 
with every circling year. Speed it, all powers of 
earth and air and sea; run with its messages all 
men of good-will; let its morning star shine upon 
your banners all children of the light; to its glad 
music, now faintly heard, now clearer growing, 
march to the battle all soldiers of the cross; till its 
light shall shine on every land, and in its peace 
and plenteousness all the sons of men shall rest 
and be satisfied. 







